


If Sought

by bookwyrmling



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Canon-Typical Drinking, Fae & Fairies, Kidnapping, Multi, The Fae are not the ones doing the kidnapping, They all still go to Samwell and are part of the hockey team, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrmling/pseuds/bookwyrmling
Summary: Tony's mother had always warned him his love of winter would be his undoing. If this was what she meant, he would happily accept his fate.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CasTheButler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasTheButler/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: Tango is summer fae royalty, but he loves winter so much. (Tango goes to college and falls in love with more than just the ice).
> 
> This piece is for the 2018 Polyamory Epifest for Check, Please! a webcomic created by Ngozi Ukazu.
> 
> Title is from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene:  
>  _For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought._

To know someone’s name was to have power over them. 

It was why those who knew never gave out their true name. The only person who knew Tony’s true name, aside from himself, was his mother, the Summer Queen. She had been the one to hear it upon his birth.

“Peter Macklin, Anthony Tangredi and Connor Whisk, as incoming forwards, you’ll be working with Bitty, Ollie and Wicks for today. Show us and the coaches what you got,” Holster said as he pointed to one side of the rink.

Tony blinked and looked over at Connor Whisk. The thing about those who fell into the category of what humans called Fae was that they also knew when they were given a fake name. It was like expecting an A and hearing an A flat.

Connor stared back at him until Tony laughed.

“Nice! I’m not the only one!”

“Of course you’re not,” one of the captains—Adam Birkholtz, because humans didn’t understand the importance of names—said as he thumped Tony on the back, “We need more than just defensemen to make a hockey team.”

“Huh? No, I meant—”

“Let’s just get the drills started,” Connor Whisk cut in. He grabbed Tony’s arm and dragged him over to where three other team members were standing near a bunch of cones.

Tony did not find the chance to speak with Connor again until after practice. He was just walking out of the shower when he saw him dressing and packing up.

“Wait for me!” Tony cried as he rushed to his stall and began throwing his clothes on, despite his body still being damp and his hair soaking the collar of his shirt. He threw his things into his bag haphazardly, but even with that speed, by the time he threw his bag over his shoulder, Connor’s stall had been empty.

“Connor!” he called out as he ran out of the locker room, finally catching up with him on the stairs outside.

Connor glanced back at Tony and sighed, but paused.

Tony smiled and dropped his hands to his knees as he caught his breath. For the first day of practice, the upperclassmen definitely hadn’t gone easy on them.

“What is it?”

“Huh?” Tony huffed as he looked up at Connor’s question.

“You were shouting at me and chasing me,” Connor pointed out, “I’m assuming that means you want to talk to me about something.”

Tony groaned as he stood back up and adjusted his bag. It felt twice as heavy after practice. “Yeah!” he said. “Which Court are you from?”

“You—!” Connor’s eyes went wide, but he bit whatever he was going to say off as he looked around. There was no one nearby and Tony grinned when Connor turned the full strength of his glare back on him.

“I didn’t realize there would be someone like me on the team,” Tony continued, “I’m from the Summer Court, but don’t recognize you.”

Connor grabbed Tony’s wrist and dragged him around to the back of Faber. There was a loading dock, but Connor didn’t jump up to sit on it, so Tony stayed standing, as well, even when Connor squeezed his wrist hard before dropping it.

“You’re really just saying all that out loud where anyone can hear,” he hissed and Tony could hear it as the accusation, rather than question, that it was.

“There wasn’t anyone else around,” Tony pointed out.

“You almost said it in practice, in front of our teammates,” Connor argued.

Tony remembered the moment Connor had dragged him into practice.

“Have you never tried to blend in with humans before?”

Tony laughed nervously and scratched at his cheek. “My family kept interactions pretty limited,” he said, “especially the last few centuries. But that’s pretty much impossible now, which is why I’m here to learn.”

Connor ground his jaw and crossed his arms. “Well, I’m here to learn and to play hockey like any human would, so leave me out of your false camaraderie. I’m aligned with the Winter Court, so we have no reason to interact.” Then he turned on his heel and left.


	2. Chapter 2

“Why would you being a part of the Winter Court mean we can’t interact?” Tango asked.

Connor looked up from his textbook with an annoyed glare. “Because you’re aligned with the Summer Court.”

“But that has nothing to do with it?”

Digging into his pocket, Connor found a quarter and held it out, heads up. “This is the Winter Court.” He turned the coin over. “This is the Summer Court.” He placed the coin on the table. “They’re on opposite sides. They don’t mix.”

Tango grinned and touched a finger to it, blending the two sides together to give George Washington a far less historically or anatomically accurate hairstyle.

Connor scoffed and snatched the coin up. “Tricks won’t change the truth,” he said as he jammed it into his pocket and slammed his book shut. Students a table over glared at him. Connor rolled his eyes and walked further into the library, searching for a private carrel he could burrow himself into.

At team breakfast the next morning, Tango sat next to him. He asked questions about team breakfast and the repercussions of missing it, about the edibility of the rubbery scrambled eggs he’d watched one of the cooks in the back pour out of a bag, and about Jack Zimmermann. He expressed disbelief at Holster having a running competition over how many hard-boiled eggs he could stuff in his mouth. He squawked when Holster then attempted to break his current record.

In fact, Tango was so preoccupied with the rest of the team that, short of his greeting when he had first sat down, Tango didn’t say a single word to Connor until they had dropped off their trays and dishes and walked out of the cafeteria.

“You know, I love winter,” he said with a smile. “It’s so different and fun! I can’t wait for a New England winter. I hear they play hockey on the pond if it gets solid enough.”

“Aren’t you from Jersey?” Connor wanted to ask, but Tango waved and ran off to his first class. Connor adjusted the strap on his bag and walked in the opposite direction.

* * *

Tango had always lived in Faerie.

He had always lived in Summer.

To him, Winter was another world to experience in short trips and small forays into the world of humans.

It explained a lot.

“I’m pretty sure my family’s rooted for the devils for centuries!”

Everyone stared at Tango oddly, silence settling among everyone in the room until cheers on the screen drew the attention of most back to the action on the screen.

“...Decades?” Tango nervously asked the few who were still watching him.

“The NHL isn’t that old,” Chowder said and Tango swallowed and nodded.

“Decades, then,” he confirmed.

Connor was pretty sure Tango wasn’t thinking about the NHL when talking about devils, but he wasn’t going to speak up about it here. He turned his attention back to the game.

Once it ended, Connor followed Tango back to their dorm, bypassing his own floor to walk Tango to his. Tango held the door open for him with a smile. Whiskey stepped inside, planning on staying just long enough to remind him to be careful. Before he could open his mouth, however, Tango threw his bag onto his bed and the New Jersey Devils hoodie laying across it.

Connor wasn’t sure what to think about Tango, but he didn’t seem bad, and his hockey was pretty good so, at the very least, the scales tipped a bit more towards positive.

Connor plopped into the desk chair next to Tango’s bed. “What did you think of that goal in the second?”


	3. Chapter 3

The first snow fell when the trees were still painted in reds and golds. It didn’t stick, each flake melting as soon as it touched the ground or warm skin, but the moment Tony saw the first flake of white fall past the window, he had to be in it.

“What are you doing?” Bitty shouted at him as he ran outside.

“It’s snowing!” Tony shouted back. “It’s Winter!”

“It’s not even sticking!” Dex shouted, too, while Bitty chased him out the door with a jacket.

The moment he got off the porch, Tony jumped into the yard and stood there with his arms out, watching as each flake that hit his flesh melted.

“Tango, you’ll freeze without a coat!” Bitty said as he ran up alongside him, buried in his own thick jacket as he held out Tony’s.

“Bitty, what does snow taste like?” Tony asked. Instead of grabbing the proffered coat, he raised his face and opened his mouth, trying to catch a flake.

“Well, I…” Bitty stumbled over Tony’s question. “I don’t think water has a taste?”

“No way. Water definitely has a taste,” Tony argued with his tongue still out, chasing after each flake he could see. “Tell ‘em, Whiskey!”

“Oh, Whiskey, you decided to join us?”

Tony glanced over to see surprise on Bitty’s face and annoyance on Whiskey’s. He felt a prick of cold on his tongue and squealed.

“I’ve got it from here,” Whiskey told Bitty, grabbing the jacket from his hands and throwing it over Tony’s face.

“I don’t think that’s how I’m supposed to wear it,” Tony pointed out.

“Snow isn’t gonna taste like much here,” Whiskey said as he watched Tony fight his way out of the jacket, “I’m sure you get it. Things in this world...they’re more muted. Like the life in everything is being filtered out. It’s better when you get out of cities, but it’s not going to ever be Winter here, even when it snows.”

Tango was frowning by the time he surfaced again, his brow furrowing deeper as he pulled the jacket on. He shivered as he zipped it close.

“When I was little, I got to go to Winter. My mother took me,” he said as he held his hand back out again to watch the flakes land and melt on it. “It was beautiful. And so different. The song it sang was filled with sounds I’d never heard before and tastes I can barely half remember but only because I haven’t been able to find them since. The feel was sharper. Even when it was soft, I could feel its bite. I keep trying to find it in the human world. I think it’s why I found hockey.”

Tony could feel Whiskey watching him. He ducked his head in embarrassment, realizing he was explaining something that Whiskey, who was aligned with the Winter Court, would have grown up knowing.

When he peeked out of the top of his eyes, to see if Whiskey was annoyed, he’d barely made eye contact before Whiskey had grabbed hold of his wrist and begun dragging him away from the Haus.

“Where are we going?” Tony asked, tripping along behind Whiskey.

“Faber,” Whiskey replied. But, for all it was one word and not even a full sentence, it didn’t sound short. It sounded happy. Tony smiled and grabbed Whiskey’s wrist right back.

“Let’s go, then!” he said, breaking into a run and pulling Whiskey along behind him.


	4. Chapter 4

Horseshoes weren’t exactly easy to find nowadays—at least not proper iron ones, and not unless you were willing to shell out a pretty penny. Denice hoped her grandfather was right and any iron would do the trick. That it was the iron content and not the item’s shape that did what she needed it to do.

She’d had to fight the smell, but Stop and Shop had been close and had a supplements section. Thankfully there had been an iron supplement in stock because Denice was never going back to that one again. The cashier had watched her a bit too carefully the whole time she was in the store.

Besides, the last thing Denice wanted to do was keep all the fae out of the theater. She just wanted to keep the pixies out of wardrobe. Lonnie had been complaining nonstop about how pieces for their upcoming take on Doctor Faustus kept moving, disappearing and rearranging themselves. Some crushed iron supplements sprinkled around the racks would hopefully solve that problem without pissing off any other of the theater’s human and non-human visitors or inhabitants.

Denice rounded the corner around one of Samwell’s gyms—the one with the ice rink, if she remembered correctly from the campus tour at freshman orientation—and walked right into two guys.

“Oof!”

“Whoa.”

“You okay?”

Denice stepped back and blinked up at them because they were tall, broad and carrying large bags—thinking on it, that might have been what she actually ran into. They were definitely athletes.

“Yeah, sorry,” she said, then stepped to the side to go around them.

“You sure?”

“You’re not that strong,” Denice shot back. “I just wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Yeah, but isn’t this your bag?” The one that had been asking the questions held out her Stop and Shop bag.

Denice gaped at it, then moaned in embarrassment. “Sorry,” she said as she took the bag back, “I’m just in a bit of a hurry. Thanks for not letting me go without it.”

“I’m Tango.”

Denice blinked up at him again, but she wasn’t going to judge someone for having a weird name. “Okay?”

The other guy rolled his eyes and grabbed Tango’s shoulder. “She doesn’t care, man,” he said. “Let’s go and let her go.”

“But, wait,” Tango argued, rolling the other guy’s hand off his shoulder and turning back to Denice. “What’s your name?”

“Denice,” she said, shifting the bag to her other hand. The supplement hadn’t been her only purchase. Denice had about three papers and two exams to study for and take before tech week ate every waking moment. Energy drinks and snacks filled most of the bag, weighing it down quite a bit.

“Cool! Don’t you think iron supplements taste bad, Denice?”

“Huh?”

“The bag.” Tango nodded at it. “Are you anemic? Snacks probably won’t help that, though.”

“No, they’re not for that.”

“What else are iron supplements used for?”

Denice was pretty sure the real answer— _ I’m an assistant stage manager in the theater department and I’m using the iron supplements to keep pixies from messing around with props _ —wouldn’t go over too well. “Art project,” she said, instead.

“Oh, cool!” Tango said, “Our team manager, Lardo, uses some weird stuff in her projects, too. You should talk with her.”

The other guy sighed, grabbed Tango’s arm and began dragging him off. “Tango, let’s go. I wanna get in some ice time before the little kids and figure skaters mess it all up.”

“Bye Denice!” Tango waved at her as Whiskey dragged him away.

“Bye…” Denice replied, confused, before turning on her heel and continuing to the theater. She got ten steps before stopping and looking into her bag, seeing nothing but cookies and bags of chips. When she looked back behind her, the two guys were gone.

How had Tango known she’d purchased iron supplements?

Why did he even care enough to ask about them?


	5. Chapter 5

Connor didn’t stop tugging Tango along until they were inside their locker room, alone. He dropped Tango’s hand, along with his own gear bag, and wheeled round to face him. “How much of an idiot can you be?”

Tango blinked at him in surprise and Connor sighed, picking his bag back up and walking over to his cubby. They would not get into full kit for a free skate practice, but Connor definitely wanted out of his jeans and into some easier to move in clothing, so he dug through his bag to find his workout gear.

Tango plopped his bag down and had a seat in his own cubby, right next to Connor. Connor looked over at him when he didn’t see any motion out of the corner of his eye only to see Tango grinning up at him, his smile unusually large.

“What?” Connor asked as he turns back to pulling on his track pants.

Tango giggled and Connor knew there must be some sort of misunderstanding somewhere because it felt like he should be embarrassed, but he didn’t say anything embarrassing.

“You worry too much,” Tango continued, despite Connor’s growing frustration and frown, “That much iron wouldn’t do more than annoy a pixie. It just let me know it was there. Our skate runners are more dangerous than those supplements.”

Connor paused, his hoodie half over his head, and snorted. “That’s what you thought I was talking about?” he asked, whipping it off the rest of the way and throwing it onto the bench with his jeans. He pulled the hem of his shirt back down from where it had rolled up to his chest and adjusted the sleeves.

Tango only smiled at him then pulled out his skates and kicked off his shoes.

“I know you didn’t grow up in this world, but you must’ve heard before. We hide ourselves for a reason. It’s safer. This isn’t our home anymore and if we want to stay we can’t let the humans catch on.”

“But Samwell’s a known safe place,” Tango pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean everyone here is safe,” Connor argued back, thinking of times when he’d felt eyes watching him a little too closely. He’d noticed a few young rowans planted recently across the campus. It would almost seem inviting if they were not all specifically placed in front of building entrances. Around that time, there had been an article in the Daily about bringing more native flora into the school’s landscaping. Connor wasn’t about to argue with humans finally showing recognition of the environment and fostering a need for conservation, but it didn’t shake the way he felt a looming shadow growing closer and closer each time he saw another possible portent.

They finished changing in heavy silence then slipped out to the rink. Early morning weekend free skates tended to be pretty empty for the first hour, which was why Connor and Tango had begun taking advantage of them.

Even with the heaviness of their conversation in the locker room, Connor could hear their harmony on the ice the moment they both began a warm-up lap.

It was why they worked so well on a line together. The team called it chemistry. They said it was proof of how much they worked together and got along with each other; how much their hockey styles complemented each other’s. Tango would smile secretly at him and Connor would send a knowing smirk right back at him. Humans couldn’t hear the music, after all.

They heard the skates, the slap of the puck and the shouts of their teammates, but they didn’t hear the way it came together, the underlying magical melody of it all. It made it easy for Connor to conduct it, send the tune in the direction he desired. His skills were limited somewhat, which was why he’d asked Bitty recently for tips with puck control, but he never had to fight anyone else for control of the music.

“Is it cheating?” Tango had asked him once as they had familiarized themselves with each others’ songs and styles.

“It’s not like it means we’ll always win,” Connor had argued, “It’s a skill, just like a slapshot. Not everyone can have Bitty’s speed, either, but he doesn’t slow it down.”

After a few warm-up laps, Connor grabbed his stick and a puck, hoping to work on some passing with Tango before the first of the kids from nearby families showed up and took over the ice, relegating them to one corner and puck-handling. Tango, however, didn’t seem as interested in practice anymore. He stared at his stick, but didn’t put blade to ice.

Connor frowned, shuffled the puck for a moment then sent it over to tap against Tango’s skate. “C’mon,” he pressed when that seemed to gather no response, “We’re gonna run out of time.”

“Y’know, Whiskey?”

Connor sighed and skated over, snagging the puck back. “Yeah, Tango?”

“My mom said it’s different here. That in other parts of the human world, you have to be more careful, but that this place is so young and disconnected that no one really thinks about our kind.”

Connor had heard that before, that Europe was more traditional; had more history. People still believed in their kind there. It meant they showed more respect, but were also more wary. But this land had its own residents and history. One of Connor’s classmates in junior high, Ricky, had been Navajo on his mother’s side. Connor had met his grandfather once when he’d gone to Ricky’s house to work on a project and the man had watched him with unusually keen eyes. They had completed the rest of the project at school because Ricky’s grandfather had suggested to his mother that he should not go to Connor’s house and Connor hadn’t felt comfortable going to Ricky’s and risking that uncanny gaze again, even if the old man had smiled and nodded at him when he’d left.

Mostly, though, fairies in the US pop culture were relegated to Tinkerbell and Halloween costumes for little girls tired of being just a princess.

“Do you really think there weren’t any of our kind here before Europeans came over? That the people who have lived here for millenia don’t have their own stories and beliefs?” he asked in aggravation. “What about students here from other countries? Or families with histories? Is it really worth risking it?” He skated further away, playing around with the puck, softening his hands and wrists.

“To be me?” Tango asked.

Connor froze, his back going ramrod straight as the puck slid two feet before stopping.

“It’s easy to blend in,” Tango continued. “I learned how to do it early enough. But it’s so easy to do that you can go your whole life without ever being seen. By anyone. And I don’t like that, even if it is safer.”

When Connor had played in Bantam, scouts had come to a couple of their games. Part of Connor had hoped they were there for him. That some WHL team up in Canada wanted his skills. He would go from there to the NHL and spend the rest of his life on the ice.

The Bantam draft passed without him.

“Honestly, you’re a great team player, but there are a lot of great team players out there,” his coach had told him when he’d asked what he could do to play hockey professionally. “You need to stand out on the ice, not just with a solid record. You need to catch people’s eye and hold their attention. No one’s going to remember you, otherwise. You have to prove you’re better than every other kid wanting to make it pro.”

Whiskey had spent the next three years in Midgets unlearning how to completely blend in and learning how to make himself remembered. It was how he’d made it to Samwell and how he hoped to make it to the NHL after. It was what he was still learning and, if the numbers Connor had started putting up once lines had been finalized were any signal, it was something Tango was likely teaching.

Tango was the first of their kind Connor had ever seen fully embrace who and what he was in this realm. Connor imagined Tango was how things were for them a couple hundred years ago. Humans flocked to him. Connor had seen him walk off with a group before, fully entranced. Tango had been smiling so big the next day the entire team had slapped his back and one of their captains told him he would have the first kegster that weekend for being such a freaky frosh. Tango had asked what he’d done so innocently the entire locker room’s jealousy had soared through the roof and even Connor had been forced to dodge some poorly aimed socks and gloves the team had thrown in Tango’s direction.

“How does he wheel that well, though?” Connor had heard Penny ask Larky later that practice.

The cold morning light peeking in through the windows didn’t do as much as the warm afternoon glow had that practice, but when Connor looked back over at him, his face screwed up in thought, Connor didn’t even need to know Tango wasn’t human to have plenty of answers to that question.

Fair Folk, some humans called them. Connor grinned at that. It suited Tango. There were times Connor thought even he had been caught up in Tango’s enchantment.

He huffed at that and ducked his head to hide his warming face.

“What’s so funny?” Tango asked, skating up to him and snagging the puck.

Connor shook his head and took the puck back. “Nothing, just…” he said and looked back up to see how close Tango was. “Maybe you’re right,” he decided and leaned in to kiss him.


	6. Chapter 6

“They throw the best parties, though!”

Denice sighed. This was the third time she had heard this argument in the last twenty minutes.

“You don’t even remember the last one,” she argued.

Brea grinned. “Exactly!”

Denice groaned.

“I woke up the next morning with my feet and legs so sore I thought they were going to fall off. Tells you what kind of a party it was!” Brea said, clutching the shirt she was holding to her chest with a dreamy smile.

“What kind of party, indeed,” Denice grumbled.

“Dee, come on! The hockey team’s parties are famous. Ask anyone. Girls included,” Bree pressed. “So I blacked out a bit. Nothing happened except for a lot of dancing and fun.”

“You don’t remember,” Denice pointed out. “You can’t know that dancing is all that happened!”

Brea put a hand to her mouth and looked at Denice in pure joy. “Oh…” she said, “Oh, that’s so cute.”

Denice sighed.

Brea leaned in close, pulling her hand down to reveal an impish grin. “Trust me, you know.”

“Really? Brea?”

Brea withdrew and shrugged. “You know, if you’re that worried, you should just come with me and keep an eye out, yourself. They did say during orientation it was good to have buddies and people knowing where you were if you were going to parties.”

Denice gnawed at her bottom lip as she stared down Brea’s puppy-dog eyes, arms crossed over her chest and foot tapping increasingly faster.

“You’re really not going to stop, are you?”

Brea fluttered her lashes and Denice groaned and surrendered.

Brea cheered while Denice unburied her phone from her desk to cancel her earlier plans.

“Denice Ford, you will not regret this!” Brea proclaimed as she plucked the phone out of her hands and threw it back onto the desk, then held out the shirt she’d been pushing at her ever since they’d gotten back from dinner.

* * *

The music was pumping loud enough to feel the bass down the block and, when Brea pointed out the dilapidated house to her, there were people spilling out onto the porch and yard with silhouettes crowded together into a quivering mass through the first floor windows. They pushed through the group on the stairs and instantly had plastic solo cups filled with radioactive green liquid shoved into their hands. Denice could smell the alcoholic bite over the syrupy sweetness of the jungle juice and realized this was probably why Brea didn’t remember the whole party last time. 

She left it on a surface covered in empty and half-filled cups just inside the front door and found herself with a cup of beer, instead, within minutes. She blinked at it, but then Brea tossed back the last of her juice and dragged her past the group of jocks doing kegstands and into a large group of people dancing.

They didn’t surface for at least six songs. 

Once they finally did, Brea squeed and waved her hand at two guys who were walking over to them. They looked familiar, though that’s not too uncommon on a college campus. Denice probably shared a class with them or something.

“We saw empty hands and thought we’d offer refills,” one of the guys said as he pressed cups into their hands. “Having fun?”

“So much!” Brea replied for the both of them. “Tango, your team’s parties are always the best!” Brea shouted back over the music and Denice realized these guys must be from the hockey team.

Tango and Brea instantly caught each other up in conversation. Denice’s attention dropped to her cup as she gave herself a moment to study its contents.

“We have a strict no drug policy.”

Denice looked up in surprise at the other guy. He had a pretty smooth look and voice.

“If you don’t trust it, I can walk you over to get a cup straight from the keg,” he continued. “We make the juice, though, so if you don’t trust us with a cup, I imagine you’re not gonna trust the cooler it came from.”

There was probably an argument Denice could make against that, but it wouldn’t be worth pushing it when the guy actually seemed to understand her wariness without her having to risk voicing it. She ended up not getting a chance, anyway, when Tango pressed in between them.

“Ah! The iron girl!” he shouted. “How’d your art project go? It was Denice, right? Remember me? I’m Tango!”

“Oh.” The faces of the two guys finally clicked, though it came with a memory of sheer exasperation at the mess she had walked back into the day after sprinkling the ground up iron supplements around the wardrobe room. It had looked like they’d been ransacked with costumes thrown everywhere and accessories pulled off of shelves to spill across the floor.

“What art project?” Brea asked, already working her way through her second cup—she probably wouldn’t remember this party again, either. Denice’s two older brothers had put the fear of God in her about jungle juice from their own stories about college and this only sealed her plan to not have so much as a sip of the stuff tonight.

“Bad!” Denice groaned over Brea’s question. “It went bad. Changed things completely!” She’d called her grandfather and he’d suggested putting nails in the racks at each end. That had helped considerably.

“I’m sorry to hear!” Tango said. He really looked disappointed, too, and Denice felt her heart jump a bit. She hid her smile in her cup and looked over at the other guy—Whiskey, Brea had called him—to find him smirking knowingly at her.

So sue her. She thought the white boy was a little cute. He had that whole puppy-like earnest vibe going on. You didn’t see that in jocks too often.

She looked back at the dancers and buried her lower face in her cup again until she heard her name being called.

“Hm?”

“Do you want to hear even better music?” Tango asked, his eyes lighting up with hope and his entire body on edge.

“Are you trying to tell me Sza isn’t one of the best out there?”

Tango balked. “Uh, errr, that is…” he stuttered, his eyes flying to the speakers and people dancing before slipping to Whiskey for aid.

Denice laughed. “It’s fine. Everyone has different preferences,” she waved Tango’s concern off, “But I also highly doubt you’re recommending we slip away to listen to showtunes, so—”

“Showtunes!”

Denice blinked.

“Showtunes are great! Sza is great, too, don’t get me wrong, but showtunes are so easy for people to participate in! And music is more fun when people are making it together.”

“If you’re inviting us to some weird drum circle or plan on pulling out a guitar to play Wonderwall…”

Tango laughed. “It’s a dance!” he promised. “I mean, I guess in a way it’s a drum circle? But not the way you’re thinking. It’s tons of fun, though.”

“You’re coming, right, Brea?” he said, turning his attention to her. “You looked like you had so much fun last time. I had to practically drag you back to the dorms. You kept wanting to dance more!”

“Definitely!”

“You don’t even remember!” Denice argued.

“But I had fun! Just like I told you! C’mon, Dee! Let’s go!”

“Unless you really don’t want to?” The disappointment on Tango’s face that time was almost enough to break hearts.

Denice sighed. “Where are we going, then?”

“Ah, well, you know the conservation area to the southwest of campus?”

Denice balked. “You’re asking two girls to go alone with you to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night?”

“Not...alone?” Tango offered, at least having the sense of mind to look embarrassed before looking around and waving another guy down.

“Kayley!” she heard him shout in greeting as the other guy joined them. Denice recognized him from the music department.

“Tony? We going?” he asked, throwing an arm around the two guys and waving at Denice and Brea. Brea blushed.

“You got a group?” Tango asked right back.

Kayley laughed. “You know me.”

“‘Swawesome!” Tango ducked out of the hold and hopped around behind Brea and Denice. “Brea, Denice, this is Ceilidh,” he introduced and tapped them on the back to move them in a bit closer. “We’re going over with a group. Guys and girls. We promise, it’s fully safe and the most fun you’ll ever have.”

As Tango spoke, more people began gathering around. Some drunk, some not. Some male, some female. A broad spectrum of styles and faces and colors all laughing and smiling.

“Fine,” Denice gave in with a smile as Brea tugged at her hand, “you got me interested.”

“Yes!” Tango crowed with a punch to the air before pointing towards the door. “Let’s go!”

“You lot stay away from those lax parties!” a southern-tipped voice shouted out after them.

“Promise, Bitty!” Tango shouted back as they spilled out into the cold night and started down the street back toward campus.

It wasn’t until they hit the Pond that Denice realized it was a lot brighter than it should be. The street lamps were more spaced out here and stuck only to the pathways, but even as the group veered off to play in the few inches of snow that had stuck at the Pond’s shore, she still had no issues seeing everyone, no matter how far they strayed.

A small and dirty snowball smacked her in the back and Denice heard Brea’s cackle sound out before being quickly silenced with an oomph. When she looked over, she found Brea laughing again as some other girl lay on top of her, likely having tackled her.

“Do you not want to play?” Tango asked.

He seemed brighter than a lot of the others with his big smile and sparkling eyes.

“I thought we were going out for music. There’s not quite enough snow to play with just yet, don’t you think?”

Tango studied the group with a thoughtful hum before shrugging and smiling at her again. “Everyone else looks like they’re having fun, though. And that’s the important part.”

Denice felt her mouth quirk up in agreement as Brea escaped the girl who had tackled her and raced over to another group that had started a game of tag.

“The music’s starting up, anyway,” Tango said. He was practically vibrating in excitement. “I can hear it. It’s going to be a great night.”

But, no matter how hard Denice strained her ears, she could only hear the sounds of everyone shrieking and laughing.

“Oh shit! Duck!” Tango shouted and pulled her down. Denice fell onto her ass in the snow as another dirty snowball flew over their heads and Tango laughed beside her.

Back near the trail, Ceilidh pulled out a pipe and began to play.

It wasn’t a tune Denice had ever heard. Nor did the pipe seem to be one of the standard ones she was familiar with because she did not know how it made the sounds it did. But she was instantly struck by the need to hear more.

She wasn’t the only one. It was as if one conscious decision had been made by the entire group as everyone moved to join Ceilidh back near the walkway and follow him along.

That was when Denice truly noticed something was off.

Drunk college kids didn’t abandon play like some sort of hivemind because someone had an instrument.

She grabbed Brea’s hand and pulled her a bit outside of the group, stopping to let everyone pass them by. The song continued in her ears even though she could see Ceilidh was no longer playing and her heart fought tooth and nail, as hard as Brea did against her grip, to continue following.

“We can rejoin them; I just need to retie my shoe,” Denice promised. She knelt down and pretended to fuss over her laces for a minute before looking back up at the group and feeling her blood run cold.

“Is your shoe fixed?” Brea asked, “Can we catch up now?”

“Hey, Brea?”

“What’s up? You’re acting kinda weird,” Brea pressed.

“I’m not feeling too well,” Denice said as she watched the fairy lights dance around the group, leading them off toward the small forest preserve nearby. Distance and recognition of the situation had helped to quell the worst of the gnawing desire to follow, but even now a portion of her wanted to dive into the revel with her entire being.

“Do you need to go back to the dorm?” Brea asked in concern.

“Yeah,” Denice pressed. “Do you think you could take me?”

“But…”

Brea looked back at the group and apparently didn’t seem to notice anything off about the dancing lights or the way the music didn’t seem to grow any quieter as the group got further away from them.

Denice had been a behind the scenes person in theatre since junior high. With her stage fright and technical mindset, it had just made more sense. It didn’t help one of her classmates in third grade had called her a bad actor in front of the class when they were doing skits for parents and a good portion of the class had laughed and agreed.

It was fine. Denice could be a bad actor. And she could be the best assistant stage manager the crew had ever seen.

But being a bad actor would have to be put on hold for just right now. Just right now she would have to act her ass off and get both herself and Brea out of this mess. First pixies; now revels. What was with all the fae in Samwell?

“Please?” Denice begged, squinting her eyes and trying to look worn out. “I don’t think I can make it up all those stairs to our floor on my own, and the elevator’s out of service.”

Brea bit at her bottom lip and watched after the distancing group until Denice wrapped an arm around her stomach and doubled over, groaning.

“Okay,” she agreed, “I’ll just let them kn—”

Denice grasped onto Brea’s hand again. “Let’s just go,” she said. “They’re way up there now and I don’t want anyone to feel bad. I’m sorry to pull you away. Maybe next time?” She put on the puppy-dog eyes and stared up at Brea until the woman visibly caved.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said as she pulled Denice to her feet and turned them back toward the dorms. “I’ll get the Dorm Medic, too.”

Denice flinched. “I don’t know if you need to go that far…” she said with a nervous laugh. “It’s probably just a 24 hour thing. I’m sure I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

Brea hummed, but as they turned away from the Pond and left the quad, she nodded acquiescence. “Okay.”

Suck it, Tina from third grade.


	7. Chapter 7

“So, what is call?”

“Huh?”

Tony settled in next to Ford against the staircase, watching everyone else dance and have fun. “When you had your interview you said call was at 4:30,” he explained. “But what is call?”

Ford raised an eyebrow at him then shook her head and laughed. “You’re the one who responded to it!”

“I felt like I had to?”

Tony wasn’t really sure why the voice he’d heard had been so commanding, especially coming from a human, but when he’d heard it he’d run to the living room to reply before he’d even processed what he’d heard.

And then he’d seen Ford and Ransom and Holster had finally stopped fighting and Connor had even joined him for dinner at the Haus and it had been the best day Tony’d had that week.

Ford hadn’t stopped laughing into her cup of beer and Tony laughed along with her even though he still wasn’t sure what call was. He’d gotten along with her so well at first, but hadn’t seen her since she went missing on the way to the revel at Epikegster until she showed up at the manager interview.

“It’s a theater thing,” Ford finally said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“The team is planning on going to see your performance!” Tony said, happy to continue the conversation. Connor said he didn’t understand why Tony seemed so interested in Ford, but Tony had watched him open a seat for her at lunch when they’d run across each other in the cafeteria and watched him walk her to class after team breakfast on Tuesdays.

“I’m not even on stage, though,” Ford groaned. “You won’t even see me.”

“I wonder how much the big bouquets of flowers cost,” Tony said, “We can use funds from the Sin Bin.”

“Oh God. Please, don’t.”

Tony grinned at Ford as she hid her face in her hands.

“The whole department’s going to hate me for bringing the hockey team of all people.”

“Tango!”

Tony looked up to where his name came from to find Ceilidh gathering a group of people again. He waved back, his heart already picking up in excitement and expectation of another revel. A few of the humans had gotten sick last time with the cold winter weather, so Tony had made sure to grab pocket warmers and a large thermos for hot chocolate.

And this time he could bring Ford along!

But when he looked back to her, or at least where she’d been standing, he realized she was missing.

“She’s chatting with Bitty,” Connor told him as he began to search for her in the crowd. Tony looked the way Connor pointed to find the two locked in a pretty tense conversation.

“I wanted to ask her to join us…” Tony deflated back against the wall.

“Don’t you think you’re a bit too caught up in one person?” Connor asked, leaning against the wall next to him, on the opposite side of where Ford had been.

It felt right having Connor at his side, but he couldn’t help but notice the empty spot Ford had vacated. At Connor’s question, however, Tony tore his attention from the Bitty and Ford and trained it on Connor, instead. “Are you jealous?” he asked.

The annoyed glare he got in return felt a little out of place as a response to his question. It also didn’t give Tony an answer either way.

“There’s just something about her,” he explained. “It makes me want to see more. Humans always seem to put their social inhibitions aside at revels so I thought it would be a fun chance to learn more about her.”

Connor sighed. The way he turned his attention back on the group gathering around Ceilidh, however, suggested he’d accepted Tony’s explanation.

“Ready to head out, then?”

The group looked just large enough. Tony figured they’d probably catch a few more on the way—people looking for fun and figuring a group of tipsy co-eds were the way to find it—so he grinned and nodded his head in confirmation.

A commotion started in the back room before they could join Ceilidh and his group. Tony turned to see what had happened just in time for Ford to grab him and Connor by the arm and beginning dragging them towards it—and away from their nighttime plans.

“Ford?”

“Dex had to walk some drunk girls back to their dorm and Chowder’s upstairs with Caitlin, so no one’s watching Nursey,” she explained as she dragged them into the other room to find Nursey sitting on top of a bookcase.

“What about you?” Connor asked.

Ford huffed, finally releasing their wrists as she turned to face them. “Ransom and Holster have me watching the Haus with them,” she said as she ticked off a finger. “Lardo’s destroying the baseball team at pong. Ollie and Wicks gave me a fistbump as they were leaving...surprisingly early and alone…” Here Ford paused with a thoughtful frown as she ticked off her third finger. In the end, she could only shrug and move on to the fourth. “Bitty’s had enough to drink he started crying at the last Beyonce song that played. You’re all we have right now.”

As each finger was ticked off, Tony felt himself deflating further and further. Ceilidh would probably leave soon with or without them.

Connor patted him on the shoulder then gave him a shove. “I got this, Tango. You can go.”

For a fleeting moment, Tony felt a new wind filling him up.

Ford’s frown grew even more, stubborn, however, and Tony knew he wouldn’t be going anywhere.

“Oh, you’ve got this?” she asked Connor. “You can get Nursey down from there, unharmed? On your own?”

Tony flinched and looked up at Nursey who was leaning precariously over the side to chat with a few girls. It wouldn’t be hard at all to get him down from there, if he were being honest. The bookcase itself was only about four feet tall. The problem was—

“And keep him from getting into any more trouble?” Ford continued.

That was the problem. Even if they got Nursey to agree to not try again, all it took was turning your back on him to get him some water and he’d be off and somewhere else.

“You two are on Nursey Watch,” Ford stated once more and Tony sighed.

“It’s okay, Whiskey. Ford’s right,” he said. “Besides, there’s always next time. And it’s always more fun with you.”

Tony saw the clenching of Connor’s jaw and slight widening of his eyes that meant he was embarrassed—Connor didn’t blush easily, though Tony had managed it once or twice when it was just them...

“Thanks!” Ford shouted and ran back out into the hall, breaking through Tony’s thoughts.

“You’re going to think about that sort of stuff now?” Connor grumbled and turned to look up at Nursey.

“Well, I like seeing you blush.”

Connor froze and, this time, Tony saw a slight tint to his cheeks under the green party light. If they couldn’t join the revel, Tony promised himself he and Conor would have some post-kegster fun of their own.


	8. Chapter 8

The wrought iron sconces went up on either side of Founders’ main entrance when the snow was still thick on the ground. Below each was a plaque thanking donors for their kind gift, allowing the university’s historical preservation group to refurbish the original lanterns that had hung there when the library was first erected.

Connor glared at them before turning around and heading for the science building. He could use the printer in the library there. As for the research he needed for his art and media course, he would just have to figure out EBSCO and JSTOR on his own and hope he could access the papers he’d need online.

“Whiskey!”

Connor turned toward where he heard his name and nodded at Ford. When she began a quick but careful jog over the packed snow, he paused to wait for her.

“Weren’t you going to the library?” she asked when she caught up to him.

“Science library’s quieter,” he said.

“I didn’t think the library would be so busy this early in the semester,” Ford replied, looking back in its direction. “I was going to stop by there, too, but maybe I’ll just go with you.”

“Sure.”

There were a number of routes to get to the science buildings in the northeast of campus. The fastest one went along the river’s east bank. The longest one avoided the river entirely, save for the one crossing that dropped you right off at the main building’s front door. It required going around Faber, but it skipped over the holly that lined both banks of the river, its dark green leaves and red berries stark and foreboding against the white snow.

When the junction to the river path came up, instead of turning towards it, Connor turned left.

“Aren’t we going to the science buildings?”

Connor looked behind him to see Ford pointing in the opposite direction. He frowned down the path, considering his options once again, before shaking his head. “I want to go the long way. You can go ahead if you want. I’ll meet you there.”

It was Ford’s turn to look down the path he had chosen in judgment. “The river paths are salted more regularly…” she explained, looking down at her chuck taylors.

Connor looked down at them, too, knowing how much of a slip risk they’d be on icy sidewalks, and smiled. “I was over by Faber this morning,” he promised, “The weather’s been good enough that the sidewalks are pretty clear.” He probably could have shaken her off, at least for a bit, by letting her think the river path would be safer, but Tony seemed to hold a strong interest in her and it made Connor curious. “If you slip, you can make me do extra sprints at practice.”

Ford chewed on her lower lip before smirking. “I’ll take those terms,” she teased and stepped up beside him as they continued along the path.

As the turned to head north towards the athletics complex, Ford said, “You know, I’d expect someone from Arizona to hate the cold.”

“I play hockey,” Connor pointed out. “And Arizona gets snow.”

Ford blinked. “Really?” she asked. “Arizona gets snow?”

Connor coughed. “Well, not all of it,” he admitted, “but...” But he couldn’t quite tell her being a member of the Winter Court left him pretty immune to cooler weather. Today was in the forties, after all, with the sun bright and high in the sky and glittering off of melting snow and ice. He barely needed the hoodie he was wearing.

“I just thought it was, like, tumbleweeds and cactus and stuff.”

“There’s a lot of that, but we have mountains, too,” he argued. Ford raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him and Connor leaned in to whisper, “We even have rivers and trees,” as if it were a secret.

Ford scoffed. “Well now you’re just bullshitting me.”

“You caught me,” Connor admitted, raising his hands in surrender. They both laughed.

Connor’s phone started buzzing from his hoodie pocket around the time they were rounding Faber. There was a block to the river. The science buildings were on just the other side.

It would be easy to ignore if it was anyone but Tony calling.

“It’s Tango,” he explained as he held up the phone. He answered when Ford nodded understanding.

“What’s up?”

“Connor? I think Ceilidh’s gone?”

Connor only just managed to keep walking, as if everything was normal. It sounded bad, but sometimes what Tony said didn’t match what he meant. “Gone?” he asked for clarification.

“Like he’s not in his dorm,” Tony replied and Connor let out a silent breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Maybe he’s at class?” Connor asked, trying to remember if he knew Ceilidh’s schedule this term yet. “Or with a friend?”

“No, like…” Tony broke off and hummed. Connor could picture the way his mouth pinched and brows furrowed when he was trying to figure something out. “Like his stuff is gone, too,” he finally said.

Connor did stop, then.

“What?” he asked sharply as he stood frozen in the middle of the pathway.

“His roommate said the RD packed it all up.”

Ford paused a couple steps ahead of him and sent a concerned glance back at him.

“Why would the RD pack up all his stuff?” Connor asked, ignoring her for the time being.

“That’s what I want to know,” Tango said. “But his roommate also said he hadn’t seen him at all for a week before that.”

Connor thought about the iron sconces at the library, the newly planted rowans in front of some of the buildings and the chatter he’d heard about someone bullying the pixies in the theater. He shivered.

“Whiskey?” Ford asked.

“I—” Connor could hear the concern in her words, but he didn’t know how to respond to her. He couldn’t focus on her and on what Tony was telling him.

“Don’t ask anyone anymore questions,” he said into the phone, choosing to finish up this conversation first. He gave Ford a glance, took in the blatant concern on her face, and nodded at her to try to alleviate the worst of it. “Ford and I are going to the science library. Bring some homework and meet us there.”

Ford’s shoulders dropped from around her ears and she took a deep breath.

“But what about Ceilidh?” Tony demanded.

Connor huffed. “Just do it, okay?” he said, his eyes moving to check the proximity. He heard footsteps coming up behind him and moved to the side to let some of the wrestling team pass. “No more questions,” he ordered and hung up the phone before Tony could say anything more. Connor couldn’t make sure there was no one listening in on that end, after all.

“Is Tango okay?” Ford asked.

Connor picked up the path again with her. “He’s fine,” he promised. “It looks like one of our friends pulled out and went home.”

“Oh.” Ford blinked. “That’s too bad. I hope your friend’s okay.”

Connor chewed on his lip and glared down at his phone he had yet to put back in his pocket. “Me, too.”


	9. Chapter 9

_“Shh! Shh! It’s okay. You’re okay.”_

_The last of Denice’s wails finally died out to hiccoughs and whimpers as she stared at her grandfather with beseeching eyes._

_“Now, what were you trying to tell me? Huh?”_

_Denice’s face scrunched back up._

_“If you cry again, I can’t understand you. Baby, use your big girl words.”_

_Denice swallowed her tears, hiccoughed, and nodded. “Susi—” she said, trying her best not to start crying again then and there. “Susi’s gone!”_

_Her grandfather’s eyes went comically wide in shock, bright white standing out against his dark skin in the pre-bedtime light. It kept Denice from crying again, though she sniffled as she pulled her blanket up to her nose and nodded below it._

_Her grandfather made a show of checking the blankets, raising Denice with the pillows to check underneath them for the missing bear. He moved to the floor to look underneath her bed, listing up the skirt and pulling out dirty socks, 2 markers—one without its cap—and a lego dragging a dust bunny behind it._

_“Well no wonder,” he said as he held it up. “No wonder Susi’s gone. You know you gotta keep a clean room.” He looked out at the floor littered with clothes from a game of dress-up and dolls and a tea set for tea party with daddy when he got home from work mid-dress-up._

_“You’re five now, baby girl,” he explained as he brought her second favorite stuffed toy—a fox—over to her, removing the play pearl necklace and brushing down its rough fur. It had been her favorite until she’d gotten Susi last weekend at a classmate’s Build-A-Bear birthday. Denice held the doll close and pressed her face into its fur. “The Brownie wants you to help now,” he said as he sat back down in the chair he’d dragged over, “so you gotta keep your room clean or he’ll get mad.”_

_“I want Susi,” Denice sniffled._

_Her grandfather sighed._

_He thought for a moment then slapped at his thighs. “Come on,” he said as he pushed himself back up onto his feet. “Get up.”_

_Denice peaked her face out of the fox’s fur and sent him a distrustful frown._

_“Get up,” he said again. “You can help me tonight.”_

_Denice sat up, scooched to the side of the bed and slipped out of her covers and onto the floor, her fox clutched tight in one hand._

_Her grandfather took the other in his own, large and warm and weathered, and walked her out to the kitchen. They pulled out the special bowl and Denice’s eyes widened._

_“Go get the little milk from the fridge,” he told her._

_Denice went over to the fridge, pulled out the quart of cream, and brought it over to her grandfather._

_“We want to say thank you to the Brownie for all his hard work,” her grandfather explained as he filled the bowl._

_“Now be careful not to spill,” he said after Denice had put the container back in the refrigerator. He handed her the bowl in exchange for the fox._

_Denice braced her shoulders and held the bowl close, watching it to make sure the ripples in the cream stilled._

_“Now come with me to the living room,” her grandfather continued, steps small and slow enough for Denice to not lose sight of him, even if her slow pace left her unable to completely keep up._

_“We have to make sure we show gratitude to the Brownie or he’ll leave,” her grandfather explained. “If you had to do all the work and no one said thank you, you’d be mad, too, right?”_

_Denice paused her steps long enough to nod her head in agreement. “Yeah.”_

_Her grandfather stopped at the fireplace._

_“Put the bowl right here on the stool,” he pointed at the stool nobody was allowed to use or move. “This is the Brownie’s stool, so he knows this is for him.”_

_Denice leaned down carefully, working hard not to spill the cream, and bounced in success only once she backed away, not having spilled a drop._

_“Good job,” her grandfather told her as he patted her shoulder. “Now maybe say sorry for not cleaning up and the Brownie will feel better.”_

_Denice licked her lips, turned her attention from her grandfather to the bowl, then around the room in search of the creature._

_“No, baby girl,” he said. “You aren’t allowed to see him. Just say sorry and he’ll hear you if he wants to listen.”_

_Denice looked up to the ceiling, like she was praying. “I’m sorry, Mr. Brownie. It’s past my bedtime, but I promise I’ll clean my room tomorrow. I’ll keep it clean, too.” She sniffled. “Please take care of Susi,” she said. “She doesn’t like baths or boys.”_

_“Good job. That was a good apology, baby girl,” her grandfather said as he pet her hair to soothe her, “I’m sure the Brownie heard.”_

_They walked back to Denice’s room, and, sitting on top of her bed, was a stuffed bear._

_“Susi!” Denice cried, diving onto the bed and holding the bear close._

_“Good night, baby girl,” her grandfather said as he set the fox on her dresser._

_“Night, grampa.”_

_He turned the lights off once Denice had climbed under her covers. He left the door cracked open so the hallway light shone through enough to not leave Denice in complete darkness._

_In the morning, when Denice woke up, the bowl was empty._

* * *

“I told you. It was right here!” Bitty cried in annoyance and stomped his foot. “I always put my pie tins back in the same spot. They wouldn’t be anywhere else!”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Bitty,” Dex replied, his own aggravation displayed in his red face and twitching eyebrow, “I haven’t touched them. But shouldn’t you be studying for that unit exam you have on Monday anyway?”

“How can I study if I can’t find my pie tins?”

“How are you supposed to find anything in this?” Tango asked as he came up behind Denice.

“It’s only a mess because I was looking for those tins,” Bitty argued before muttering to himself, “First my baking chocolate is replaced with more sriracha. Now this?”

“Last week, Chowder thought Joe went missing,” Denice stated. “He found it under his bed after cleaning. Do things go missing around here a lot?”

“I’ve never lost my tools here. And everything I stored over the summer was right where I left it,” Dex said, “but Nursey’s losing his shit all the time here. I think he’s locked himself in the library to rewrite a paper that he lost.”

Denice hummed, looking around the Haus, before going to one of the cupboards and grabbing one of Bitty’s nice bowls he used for special team dinners. When she turned back to the group, they were all staring at her.

“What?” she asked before grabbing a stool from near the table. “Anyone use this?”

“Me,” Bitty pointed out. “All the time.”

“You’re gonna have to get a new stool,” Denice said then walked to the refrigerator.

“Is Ford going crazy?” Dex asked.

“Umm….” Tango replied, for once not the one asking questions.

Denice found cream in the fridge and sighed in relief.

“What are you even doing?” Bitty asked her in disbelief.

Denice filled the bowl with cream as she answered. “The Haus as rundown as it is, it makes sense you had some sort of help for it to last this long. It must really like all your work, Dex, but there’s only so much that can be expected from a bunch of boys.”

“What?”

“Ford!” Tango gasped.

Denice sighed and walked the bowl and stool into the living room, setting the stool up in an inconspicuous corner. She set the bowl of cream on top of it.

“You can’t just leave that there! If it gets knocked over, it’ll soak into the carpet and spoil!” Bitty pointed out, “I did not chase the bad smells out of here for—”

“Nobody touch it,” Denice argued, “It’s not yours. If I’m right, it’ll be gone by tomorrow morning. Now, let’s put the kitchen back together, and maybe Bitty’s pie tins will be back by tomorrow, too.”


	10. Chapter 10

Tony first met the Haus’s Caretaker on his tour in August. He was a protective sort, as most of his kind were, and he had not liked feeling like Tony was encroaching on his territory.

“The two spirits that spend their time in the attic make this place crowded enough,” he’d told Tony as he’d tried to shoo him out.

Tony had ignored the warnings and run upstairs to meet the ghosts.

Connor had been more respectful and avoided the place as much as possible.

Tony still wouldn’t call himself friends with the guy, but they’d fallen into an understanding. Tony wouldn’t get in his way with the house’s well-being and he wouldn’t make life any harder for Tony when he was visiting the rest of the team.

“The cream was still there this morning,” Bitty proclaimed when Ford joined the team at breakfast.

Her eyes widened in obvious surprise.

“Tell her the rest, Bitty,” Connor mumbled in annoyance as he stabbed his fork at his eggs.

Ford looked in their direction and Tony dropped his face to his own plate.

“If she knows about that, what else does she know?” Connor had asked him last night when Tony had told him about the whole interaction.

“What if she knew about Ceilidh?” he pressed, “He disappeared. What if she knows about us?”

“We haven’t disappeared,” Tony had pointed out. Connor had huffed, but hadn’t said anything more.

But still, Tony worried.

Bitty, on the other hand, flushed and wiggled in his seat. “My pie tins were next to the bowl, along with a bottle of sriracha. The moment I figure out who did this…”

“It’s a Brownie,” Ford cut off Bitty’s misplaced rant.

“If you want a specific baked good, you know the request process,” Bitty huffed. “Stealing my pie tins won’t help you any.”

Tony continued to watch the two. Ford rubbed her face with her hands and groaned in annoyance.

“Not a chocolate brownie,” she corrected. “A Brownie. As in one of the Fair Folk?”

When Bitty still looked at her in confused suspicion, Tony cut in. “Just say fairy. It’s what people know,” he told her.

Ford looked at him in confusion and distrust and Connor punched him in the thigh to shut him up.

“That’s what they always call fairies in movies, anyway,” Tony said with a laugh.

Ford sighed and nodded her head to confirm fairies were, indeed, what she was talking about.

Tony hissed and rubbed at his thigh where Connor had punched him. He’d used his knuckles!

“We had one in my house growing up,” Ford continued. “They help around the house, but pull pranks on people not pulling their weight or who think they don’t appreciate them. Eventually they’ll leave if it gets too bad. I hear if a Brownie leaves a house, it’s sure to fall to ruin soon after. Anyway, the cream was to show gratitude...but maybe he prefers sriracha?”

Tony thought of how the Caretaker eyed the cupboard of sriracha any time they were in the kitchen together and refused to make eye contact when Ford looked his way. For confirmation? For a punchline? Tony wasn’t sure why, but the pinched look on Connor’s face suggested he might.

Connor slammed back the rest of his milk then stood, grabbed his tray and left without a word.

“Trust a frat house to have such a weird Brownie…” Ford said as she pushed her hashbrowns around, watching Connor storm out of the cafeteria. Tony felt his stomach sink and dropped his eyes back down to his plate. He ignored Ford’s eyes on him for the rest of team breakfast.

Tony’s stats class and Ford’s calc class were both located in Gregory, so they usually walked from breakfast together on Mondays and Wednesdays.

“Tango?” she asked when they were half-way across Lake Quad and Tony still hadn’t so much as looked in her direction. He stared down at his phone, instead, and the time and place Connor had sent him shortly after storming out.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk just yet,” he said.

Tony could feel Ford deflate next to him. He heard her steps slow.

Tony sped up. _b thr_ he texted back.

* * *

Apparently two guys waiting in front of a girl’s dorm room was creepy.

Tony hadn’t known that before, and he still wasn’t completely sure if that was the case. About half the girls who walked past them eyed them warily, one third ignored them, and the rest smiled and flirted. Tony had at least five promises to come to the next hockey kegster by the time Ford came into sight.

Her shoulders drooped the moment she caught sight of them. Her face fell, leaving her looking exhausted. Much as it had when Connor had been clearly upset at breakfast that morning, Tony felt his stomach clench.

“I hope you weren’t waiting long,” she greeted with a painfully fake smile as she stepped between them to unlock her door. “If you were looking for me, you could’ve texted or called. Or even stopped by the library. Wednesday nights are when I work at the writing center, after all.”

“We can’t really go to the library right now,” Connor explained because he didn’t like to talk a lot, but he always managed to find the best words when he needed to. “Waiting here seemed like the best option.”

Ford’s lock clicked, but she didn’t open the door. Tony watched her face closely and he saw the clenching of her jaw and the pinching of her lips and eyebrows.

“Can we come in?” he asked.

“We need to talk,” Connor pressed.

Ford looked between the both of them—Connor on her right and Tango on her left. She sighed and opened her door. “Come in,” she acquiesced. “My roommate has a night class.”

The freshman dorms weren’t large by any stretch of the imagination, but Ford and her roommate had managed to make room for a small sofa and tv stand. Tony pulled Connor into the seat next to him as Ford brought her desk chair over.

Connor pulled Tony’s hand into his and hid them between their legs. Tony squeezed back. It was weird for him to think about talking to a human about who and what he was. Tony could only imagine how Connor was feeling, having grown up hiding his whole life.

It made it hard to start the conversation.

“You said you wanted to talk?” Ford asked.

Tony could see Connor’s jaw working and the gears turning in his mind. He was probably trying to find a way to see if Ford knew what they were without having to admit what they were.

“Is it because I knew about the Brownie?” Ford pressed.

Connor’s grip tightened around Tony’s hand and he winced at it.

“Or how I know about the pixies in the theater?” Ford continued.

“Were you the one who pulled the prank on the pixies in the theater building?”

“What?”

Tony blinked in confusion at the shocked faces staring back at him.

“Yeah,” he explained, his face screwed up as he thought back on the game of telephone that must have occurred to have heard about the pixies’ temper tantrum from Jenny and Mandy of all people. “I never really heard what happened exactly, but something got them all in a huff and pretty pissed off last semester.”

“Ah…” Ford blushed and Tony lit up as he realized she had been the person behind it all.

“I tried using iron supplements to keep them out of the costumes,” she admitted as she reached a hand up to adjust her glasses. “They kept undoing pins or switching things around and our wardrobe supervisor was about to go insane from it all.”

Tony and Connor looked at each other. It was easy enough to remember the day they had met her and she’d claimed the supplements were for an art project.

Tony looked back at Ford in complete bafflement.

“You...used iron supplements?”

Ford groaned and dropped her face into her hands and Tony cracked up.

“Yes, please, laugh,” she lamented into her hands. “They made a complete mess of the room.”

Tony fell over against Connor, still laughing. He slipped his hand out of Connor’s, but only to wrap it around him and hold him close enough to laugh into his shoulder.

Ford sighed and threw her head back to stare up at the ceiling. “I ended up putting nails in the racks and storing some with the accessories and materials, which seemed to help for the most part.” She smirked and shook her head then looked over to her desk. “I still have the supplements, actually. They were too expensive to just throw them away.”

“So you do know,” Connor confirmed through Tony’s shaking laughter and tight hold.

Ford took a deep breath, dropped the wry grin, and nodded. “I know.”

The sudden shift in tone back to serious was quick enough that it took a moment to reach Tony, but once Connor started elbowing him in the stomach, he picked up on the change quick enough: stifling his laughter and sitting up straight.

Connor’s hands were clasped and hanging between his legs, elbows resting on his knees, so Tony couldn’t take his hand again. It was a shame and left Tony unsure what to do with his own hands.

“Since when?” Connor continued his questions as Tony stared at his hands.

“Does it matter?” Ford asked.

Tony gave her a comforting smile, sensing how defensive she was beginning to get. “It matters,” he admitted.

Ford looked at him and sighed in surrender.

“Since the kegster when you invited me to the revel,” she admitted. “I figured it out on the way there and left with my roommate. She doesn’t know, though! I just told her I didn’t feel well and needed her to bring me back to the dorm.”

“So you haven’t told anyone?” Tony asked in surprise.

“No. Definitely not,” Ford replied adamantly. “The last thing I’d ever want to do is tick off a fae….r folk.” She bit her tongue and her eyes went wide. “I wouldn’t want to anger the fair folk. At all.”

Tony snorted. “It’s not a slur or anything. Promise,” he said, “You can say fairy. Only the old, snooty ones are picky about that anymore.”

“No, pretty sure it’s more than that,” Connor replied. “You’re just weird.”

Ford laughed, too, and Tango smiled and jumped at it.

“You don’t have to be afraid of us or anything. Promise,” he swore. “You’re a really cool person and I want to be a part of your life.”

Her laughter cut off when Ford froze, watching Tony with wide-eyed surprise. “But...I have done some stuff...” she admitted as she dropped her gaze to the floor.

Beside him, Connor went stiff.

“Like what?”

“Like…” Ford admitted nervously, “how many times have you ended up on Nursey Patrol at kegsters this semester?”

Tony turned to Connor who looked to be doing the mental calculations Tony didn’t want to in his head. He knew it was a lot more than the previous semester, though.

“So, what?” he asked, “When you started putting us on Nursey Patrol…?”

“I was trying to stop the revels and protect the people caught by your glamours.”

Tony frowned. “Why would you need to protect—?”

“They’re not in danger.”

Tony slammed his mouth shut when Connor interrupted him. He sounded angry. Tony wasn’t sure he’d heard Connor angry more than once or twice before.

But instead of letting it fester, Connor took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he dropped his shoulders. “I know it probably isn’t the case for everyone,” he told Ford, “but we like to stay under the radar and that’s a lot easier to do when humans don’t go missing or die.”

He sent a soft smile over at Tony and Tony smiled back. He always did when Connor smiled at him. Connor had the best smile, after all. It was nice enough Tony didn’t even catch what it was Connor said after it at first.

“Tony even started keeping pocket warmers for the ones who got cold.”

“You did?”

Ford’s question shook Tony out of his haze. He frowned as his brain finished processing what Connor had said, then beamed.  “We wouldn’t want anyone to get sick, after all.”

Her face contorted into an expression Tony wasn’t sure how to read: some mix between an indulgent smile and disbelief. He detected a hint of laughter in the way her eyes sparkled, as well. Or, at least he assumed it was her eyes and not the reflection of the lights in her glasses.

“You would,” she eventually said as she shook her head and silent laughter shook her shoulders. She shrugged and smile turned from indulgent to wry. “So maybe it was a bit unnecessary...”

“Maybe it was for the best, though,” Connor argued.

Tony wanted to disagree. Tony did disagree. He hadn’t hosted or been to a revel since January. Playing hockey with Connor helped somewhat, but he wanted to move and dance. He wanted to feel the earth under his feet and see the sky above his head and insert himself into the magic he could find around the school. He wanted to bring the nature in the area back to life.

“Um…?” Ford didn’t seem to understand, either.

“It’s hard to explain,” Connor said, rubbing at the back of his neck, “but the campus has become pretty unwelcoming recently.”

Tony couldn’t argue with that.

“Is that why you’ve been taking weird routes to go places?” Ford asked.

“The holly near the river is...pretty threatening,” Connor admitted.

“All the rowans would be nice if they weren’t planted in front of doors,” Tony complained as he flopped his head back against the couch.

“The sconces by the library!” Ford realized. “They’re iron, aren’t they? That’s why you couldn’t meet me there.”

“Yup,” Tony replied. “Library is now off-limits.”

Ford’s eyes went distant as she thought. “But, I mean...it’s just a coincidence, right?” she finally asked. “Who’d know to do everything purposefully?”

When Tony looked over at Connor, Connor was already looking at him.

“Do you remember Ceilidh?” Tony asked.

“Yeah,” Ford admitted, “I didn’t see him at the last party.”

Connor nodded. “He’s gone missing.”

Ford blanched and Tony shrunk into himself.

“The story the school says is that he withdrew…” Connor continued.

Tony finished the rest: “...but no one’s been able to reach him since he disappeared.”


	11. Chapter 11

_“Oh, wait,” Tony said as Ford kicked them out for the night. “Why did you think we were using glamours?”_

_“Because no one noticed the fairy lights and they all reacted like a hive mind to the pipe. They flocked around you guys at the party, too,” Ford said, ticking each item off. “It seemed pretty obvious.”_

_“Ah. That’s all just because of Tony, though,” Connor argued. “We didn’t use any glamours until we got the group outside.”_

_“Wait…” Ford said, her brows furrowed in confusion. “Then why do you both always look so hot?”_

_“Uh…” Connor sent wide eyes over at Tony, just thankful he didn’t feel his face heating up in embarrassment. Tony, on the other hand, looked completely pleased with himself._

_“Ohmigod,” Ford gasped, “What am I saying?”_

* * *

 

“We should’ve told Ford way earlier.”

Connor rolled his eyes. “We didn’t tell her,” he reminded him, “She told us she knew.”

“Yeah, but if we had told her earlier, she could’ve been helping us get into the library back when I was looking for research materials for my history midterm paper,” Tony argued as he picked a leaf off a Mountain Laurel and spun it between his fingers. He smiled at it.

“You’re still not done with it,” Connor pointed out, “And don’t eat that. It’s toxic to humans.”

“I’m not human,” Tony pouted, pulling the leaf in a bit closer.

“No,” Connor agreed. “But you are trying to keep that a secret, aren’t you?”

Tony’s pout dropped down to the leaf. He sighed then held it back up to the plant, reattaching it to where he’d pulled it off, his magic working to seamlessly repair the tear. “Fine,” he grumbled. “But I’m eating a big salad at dinner. All the cooked veggies at the cafeteria are too far from the earth.”

“Also, I have all the research,” he added after a moment of continued sulking. “I just need to write it now.”

Ford opened the side exit they were waiting at. “Hey guys. Come on in.”

The invitation rushed over them and Tony squeezed past her, quick to run for the warm indoors. Connor followed close behind.

“Thank you, my queen!” Tony crowed as he began to unwind his scarf and remove his jacket.

“Don’t you have an actual queen, though?” Ford teased, letting the door fall shut as she jumped away from the cold air she’d let in with them.

“Yeah,” Tony admitted, “but she’s my mom.”

Connor, who had taken one glove off and was working on the next, froze and stared at Tony.

“Seriously?!”

Everyone in the area glared at Ford’s outburst. She clapped her hands and sent an apologetic grimace at them.

“Yeah,” Tony continued as if he hadn’t just admitted he was royalty. “Do you need to meet her?”

Ford blanched. “No,” she promised. “That’s terrifying. Ohmigod.” Her wide eyes looked past both boys as she processed the revelation. “How am I still alive and not, like, trapped in another world? Or as, like, a cockroach?”

“Because you live here?” Tony asked. “And we don’t really have that kind of power.”

Connor clapped a hand on Tony’s shoulder and began pushing him out of the area. They’d find an empty table somewhere on the second floor and set up camp there. “Thanks for letting us in, Ford,” he said as they passed her. “You can go back to your shift at the writing center.”

It seemed to help her shake off the surprise at Tony’s admission as she smiled at them and waved them off. “Thanks, Whiskey. See you guys around.”

They split ways at the next aisle and Connor and Tony watched her go.

“So when are you going to admit that you like her?” Connor asked after she turned the corner.

Tony frowned and his brows furrowed in confusion. “Is that even in question?”

Connor sighed and tapped his arm against Tony’s. “Like as more than a friend.”

“Oh,” Tony said. “Um...Why?”

Connor continued walking again, taking to the stairs. This was a conversation he had been putting off for a while, but he didn’t think he’d be able to put it off any longer. “Because I want to be ready for it.” he replied.

“So you can tell her, too?”

Connor froze on the stairs and whipped his gaze around to Tony in disbelief. “Because I want to know where we stand,” he said instead, low enough for the other people walking down the stairs to not hear without paying extra attention. He began climbing again, Tony following alongside. “Like...am I supposed to back off?”

There was a table in a nearby corner. Most people didn’t take it because it was so close to the stairs and main arterials, but it saw surprisingly little foot traffic. Tony dropped his bag on the table and turned to Connor. “Why would you do that? I like both you and her,” he said. “So why not date you both?”

“With as focused as you are on her…” Connor’s explanation trailed off. It wasn’t that he was blaming Ford. It just seemed like Tony was already so wrapped up in her that should they become anything more there wouldn’t be room for him. Monogamy wasn’t generally his kind’s forte, but Tony had proven himself to be an oddball on more than one occasion.

“Are you jealous?” Tony asked when Connor found it too hard to voice those thoughts and concerns.

“No.” Connor shook his head emphatically. “I’m not jealous. I just…” he trailed off again, still trying to find the best way to explain his concerns. “You’re the Prince of Summer?” he ended up asking, instead.

“And?” It was confirmation enough, even if the question itself seemed to have given Tony mental whiplash.

Connor set his bag down on the floor and plopped into a chair. He furnished his arm, holding it out as if to show off a display on the table itself. “Don’t you have actual duties and responsibilities in picking your partners?” he explained.

“Not really,” Tony shrugged easily. “Summer always has a queen. I’m pretty much free.”

As if the answer was that simple.

Connor laughed. “You know?” he asked with a shake of his head as he let his arm fall to rest on the tabletop. “The more I think about it, the more sense this makes. You probably grew up doing whatever you wanted.”

Tony sat down across from him and rested his chin in his hands, elbows holding him up on the table. “How’d you know?”

Connor snorted. “Why did I even ask?”

“I don’t know,” Tony shrugged. “Why did you?”

Instead of responding, Connor pulled out a notebook and his calculus textbook and set to work. Tony had his computer with him and a comp sci project due at the end of the week. They fell into an easy silence, one in a long line of comfortable moments in each other’s presence without having to be the sole focus of each others’ attention.

“Hey, guys,” Ford greeted about an hour later, letting her armful of books spill across the rest of the table. “Mind if I join you?”

Tony closed his laptop and smiled at her. “All done?”

“Yeah.” Ford gave a thumbs up. “Managed to beat the monstrosity a second-year gave me into submission.”

“It must have been an absolute beast,” Tony praised in awe.

Ford grinned. “But I slayed it.”

As Ford and Tony bantered, Connor turned back to his calculus homework and began working on the next problem. It was nice to have their hushed conversation in the background. Connor could feel like he was a part of something without having to participate when he couldn’t.

Ford was good at reading the atmosphere. She was good at getting Tony to focus. She was smart. She was beautiful. She was considerate. She had learned all the safe paths around campus for the two of them and turned down them without even a thought now. It wasn’t a surprise Tony was so interested in her. Connor leaned back in his chair and stretched, taking a moment to look at Ford.

Yes, Connor could see what would draw Tony in. Because, even more than everything else that Ford was, she was more.

Connor couldn’t put his finger on it. Part of him wondered if it was just the knowledge that she accepted them for what they were and still treated them the same. Or maybe it was because she knew what they were and respected that part of them. Ford had said she knew what it was like to feel unsafe or unwanted somewhere. Maybe it was that recognition of similar circumstances.

Connor wasn’t so sure, though.

He’d mentioned it to Tony before. How odd it was that Tony was so caught up in her specifically. How much she stood out from the rest.

Tony had laughed and told Connor it was okay to say he was caught up in her, too, then wondered if she might have some bit of non-human blood in her from a previous generation.

It wasn’t impossible, but there were likelier explanations.

“A fairy doctor,” he suggested later that evening as the two of them were walking back to the dorms after dinner at one of the residence halls in East Quad.

“Where?” Tango asked, looking around nervously.

“I think Ford has that ability,” Connor explained. “I’ve heard a bit about them. They would attract our kind and borrow our magic to help cure human ails caused by more dangerous magic or magical run-ins.”

Tony frowned in thought as he mulled it over, the idea that it could be something beyond the natural that drew their attention to Ford. But the Haus’s Caretaker seemed to like her. And the pixies could have made her life far worse if they’d really wanted to get revenge on her. And her childhood home had a Caretaker, as well. Ford had been surrounded by their kind her entire life and yet didn’t seem to have faced more than minor pranks and issues because of it.

“Then does that mean I shouldn’t date her?” Tony asked and Connor choked on his laugh.

“I think it means you’re compatible, if anything,” he argued.

“And you’re really okay if I ask her?”

“I told you I was, didn’t I?”

“And you really don’t want to date her, too?”

Connor paused and looked back at Tony in surprise. “Do you want me to?”

“I want you to do what you want to do.”

Connor smiled fondly. His heart ached with how much he cared about Tony. With a cursory glance and not a soul in sight on the bridge, Connor leaned in and kissed him.

“Get them!”

There were footsteps pounding the sidewalk, the sound of bells ringing and, before Connor could catch a single face, he had a bag thrown over his head and something heavy and draining snapped onto his wrist.

“Connor!” he heard Tony shout for him, but, before he could reply, there was a sharp pain to his head.

It was the last thing Connor remembered before waking up in a locked steel room.


	12. Chapter 12

“Has anyone gotten hold of either of them?”

The team looked around at each other at Murray’s question. No one spoke up, but the concerned confusion on their faces gave their answer. Denice pulled out her phone and sent another text to both of them, her fingers shaking enough even spell check couldn’t translate what she was trying to say.

It was one thing to miss team breakfast. Everyone tried not to, but classes and homework and study groups sometimes got in the way. It was another to miss practice entirely and without notice.

Denice was pretty sure Tango would never miss team breakfast, though. And knew, for a fact, Whiskey would rather skip a class than miss practice. Not to mention they both were always quick to respond to any text she sent. The longest Tango had ever gone without replying to her was four hours and that was because he’d been asleep. He’d woken up at 3am, seen the text, and immediately replied. Denice was pretty sure Whiskey’s longest response time was even shorter.

_“The story the school says is that he withdrew…”_

_“...but no one’s heard from him since.”_

“I’m going to go look for them,” she told Lardo, not even waiting for a response before she bolted for the door. The team had managed until January without her. They could manage the rest of this practice, too. Whiskey and Tango, on the other hand, might not.

Whiskey’s roommate said he hadn’t seen him since yesterday, but that it wasn’t usual. “I think he has hockey practice right now. Have you checked there?”

Tango’s roommate wasn’t there, either, and it took their neighbors shouting at her to leave to get her to stop pounding on the door.

They didn’t have classes together and she didn’t know where their advisors were, but Ford wasn’t sure she wanted to bring the administration into this just yet, either. If they were covering up for Ceilidh, would they cover up for Whiskey and Tango, too?

It would be better to search with the resources she had for now. She took a deep breath as a plan began to formulate in her mind. She had more resources than most.

Denice was half of the way to the Haus when she realized she had subconsciously taken the long route she usually took with the boys to avoid the bridge with the cast iron bars and decoration. She turned at the next street and went straight for it. Time was the most important thing right now and that bridge was the quickest and closest way across the river.

It had been a long time since Denice had done this. She didn’t even remember it, if she were being honest, but her grandpa still liked to tease her about it. She’d heard the story so many times it practically was a memory, anyway.

She filled up the bowl with sriracha and set it on the stool in the corner of the living room, stepped back and put her hands together in a prayer. “I’m sorry for reaching out to you like this. I know you’d rather me not try to communicate with you, but please. People’s lives may be in danger and I don’t know who else to go to,” she explained.

“Whiskey and Tango, the other two Fair Folk, have gone missing. They’re not the first, either. Can you do anything to help me find them?”

There was silence for several moments afterward and Denice was losing hope, about to beg the Brownie not to leave, when there was a loud crash upstairs.

Denice took the stairs at a run, stumbling once but using her hands to propel her back up the moment the hit the stairs. When she hit the landing for the second floor, the attic door slammed open and a freezing cold wind moved through her in that direction. She ran again.

Inside, Ransom and Holster’s room was a mess of papers and books spread over the floor, desks and a sofa that looked moderately less trashed than the one downstairs. Their laundry basket appeared to be shared and overflowing. A milk jug filled with water and an open box of cereal sat on the floor next to the bottom bunk and there was a Canadian flag hanging from the rafters over the top bunk. Signed Falconers posters ran up the wall at the foot of the bunks.

A banner with a torn edge appeared to have fallen onto the floor from over the oval window looking over the front yard, taking a cup of writing utensils from the desk with it.

The cold breeze blew through her again and fluttered the banner.

Taking it as a clue, Denice picked it up to find a school banner that read PENITUS POTUS. The rest of the motto appeared to have been torn off and left behind. It was definitely the kind of thing you’d find in a frat, but what could the hint be telling her about it?

Did another frat or sports team have the boys?

Was it really the administration?

The school’s motto was carved into Founder’s and the Commons. Were they in one of those buildings?

Or was the motto itself trying to tell her something?

_Drink deeply._

But not just drink deeply. _Drink deeply_ _from the well of knowledge_.

“Am I supposed to go to the well?” she asked the room, knowing it was not as empty as it appeared.

Downstairs, the attic door slammed shut then back open and Denice took that as her answer.

“Thank you!” she shouted to the house’s non-human residents as she dropped the banner and ran for the exit. “All of you!”

She was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining the _Good luck!_ she heard called out after her.

Theater took a lot of energy, and that wasn’t from just the performers. Denice thanked that and having two annoying and highly athletic older brothers as she once more hit the pavement, specifically reminding herself to take the fastest route over to Lake Quad.

She stopped several feet away from it to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath so that she didn’t have to actually touch the thing. She’d seen guys peeing on it while walking back to her dorm late at night. Her first semester here, she’d helped the fiber crafts club yarn bomb the campus and, when they’d taken everything down before it got soggy and ratty from the fall rains, she’d smelled the urine soaked into the well’s covering.

Boys were so gross.

She was going to make Whiskey and Tango both pay for this when she found them if it was all for anything other than the most dire of circumstances.

When she had enough breath to speak, she walked the rest of the way over and looked down past the grate covering the opening and into the well.

“You don’t know me,” she spoke into the well. “Jenny and Mandy and the Samwell Hockey Haus’s Brownie sent me here because they think you can help. People on campus are going missing right now. Specifically, non-human people. People like you. Two friends of mine just went missing, too, and I need to find them. Tony Tangredi and Connor Whisk are the names they go by here. I’m sorry I don’t know their real names, and I don’t think they’d want me to tell you even if I did. The hockey team calls them Tango and Whiskey. Please, if you can help me—or let me know where I can find someone who will help me—please point me in the right direction.”

On the way out the door of the Haus, one of Denice’s pockets felt heavier and fuller. She pulled it out now, thinking it might be something to help her, and found a quarter.

“I hope you like money or really are a wishing well,” she said before dropping it in and staring down the well.

_Please,_ she wished _. Help me find them._

A small blue light began to shine in the darkness of the well, growing brighter and larger as it drew closer. As it passed through the grate, Denice stepped away from the well, giving it space to float at approximately face height with her. It didn’t appear to be anything other than a blue light, but before she could get a proper look at it, it dissipated.

“Wait!” Denice cried as she reached out to where it had been.

Out of the corner of her eye, in the direction of the pond, currently a mottled red and purple from the setting sun, blue light flickered again.

A Will o’ the Wisp, then.

Denice’s grandfather had told her to never follow one as they had a tendency to lead you astray and into situations you could not safely get yourself out of, but what else could she do?

She took a step towards the light, only for it to retreat to the shore.

She would just make sure to pay attention to where she was and what was going on around her.

The light disappeared and reappeared along the trail that circled the pond and Denice took off after it, unwilling to let the creature and its trail out of her sight despite the developing stitch in her side.

When she began to slow a quarter of the way around the pond, she realized the Will o’ the Wisp also slowed down to stay within in her sight. It was a blessing Denice was quick to grasp onto as she dropped to a walk, rubbing at her side as she swallowed large breaths.

On the other side of the lake—she could look directly over the water to the well and campus buildings—it led her off the path and into the trees. Denice gave one final glance back at the path then veered into the brush.

About fifteen feet in, she broke into a clearing with a ring of mushrooms settled under a large oak tree growing out of the very middle of the clearing. The Will o’ the Wisp hovered within the circle for a moment then extinguished. It did not reappear.

It was almost absurd how obvious a fae spot this was: a ring to dance in and a fairy tree to boot. With her attention carefully on the ground, Denice walked towards the tree until she found the line of rocks marking the tree’s border. She looked inside.

The clearing was empty, or at least that was how it appeared at first glance. But now that she was close, Denice could see the oak tree’s leaves rustling and dancing in ways the wind wouldn’t cause. When the wind did pick up, it was with a distinctly musical quality. It made her want to step inside. It made her want to dance.

“I’m a student of Samwell University. I am human, as I’m sure you can tell,” she introduced herself, but paused when it came to giving her name. “Some of the people closest to me call me Foxtrot,” she said, instead. It wasn’t used often, but when enough of the team had realized it would make their frog trio say WTF in the NATO phonetic alphabet, they’d made it her official hockey name. It would suit her well enough for this.

The rustling of the trees picked up, but there appeared to be no noticeable signs that she should stop, so Denice kept on.

“I don’t know how much you are aware of. Or if any of you keep contact with or residence on the campus grounds, but non-humans are going missing and are being chased out. I am trying to find two of them. They’re close friends of mine and I’m worried.”

The space before her rippled, as if an invisible curtain had been disturbed. Denice reached her hand out in curiosity, but held back before making any form of contact.

“We don’t get Fairy Doctors much anymore,” a voice called out. “We thought they were all gone.”

“We?” Denice asked the disembodied voice as she brought her hand back in to her chest. The space before her fluttered again.

“Greetings,” the voice said instead of offering an answer. “You’ve stumbled upon quite the location.”

“A Will o’ the Wisp led me,” Denice explained.

The longer the shadows became, the frequently Denice saw the shimmering of the space in front of her. Now, as the sky streaked purple, she could see the beginning of a humanoid shadow several feet in front of her.

“That is quite a lot of faith to place on such a being known for leading humans astray,” the shadow said. Denice could hear the smirk in its voice even if she couldn’t divine a gender, assuming the being held one.

“I have few alternatives left,” she explained. “And some individuals I trust led me to it.”

Every minute brought the shadow into stronger relief. “I wonder...” it said. “That one is a young one, after all. The well’s previous resident was trapped inside by the iron grate placed over it a few years ago. It has either since moved on or perished.”

Denice’s eyes widened in concerned surprise. She hadn’t even thought about the grate. Could it be iron? But the Will o’ the Wisp had slipped through without problem. How?

“Your kind has been fighting us back for a long time, after all,” the shadow pressed, its head cocked to one side.

“I can’t speak for all humans,” Denice replied evenly, “but there’s no reason we can’t live in harmony so long as we don’t mean harm to each other.”

The shadow laughed, bringing a hand up to where its mouth would be if it were defined enough. “You Doctors are always all alike,” it said in a pejorative tone.

“I’m a business major…” Denice argued, but the shadow displayed no interest.

“That’s irrelevant.”

The sky was darkening, the sun setting fast. When Denice looked up to the sky she saw the first stars beginning to peek out amongst the dark blue on the eastern sky. She didn’t have time to argue. “Will you help me, please?” she asked, instead.

“What are you offering?”

Denice turned out her pockets, looking for anything she had to offer. There was her student ID, which got her into her dorm and the cafeteria. It also included her name. It went back into her pocket along with her driver’s license and debit card. Her phone followed those three items just as quickly. There was thirty-seven cents and the back of an earring she’d lost at Faber left after that. “I don’t have much on me,” she admitted, holding the items out, “but I could bring more after.” She knew it wasn’t much of a bargain, certainly not worth much of a deal to this shadow being. “And it’d be stopping people who would come after you soon enough,” she added, hoping to sweeten the pot just a little bit more.

The shadow snorted in derision. Denice could see a mouth full of sharp teeth glinting in the remaining light. “I dare them to try,” it said. “They’ll learn quick enough why they shouldn’t.” Its eyes, bright white with a dark iris, zeroed in on her head and the dangerous smile disappeared. “What is that in your hair?” it asked. “That which gives you another set of ears.”

Denice reached a hand up to pat along her head until she hit a fabric knot and remembered the fox ears joke some of the hockey team had made when they dubbed her Foxtrot. “My headband?” she asked.

“Yes, that.”

Denice pulled it off, her hair puffing out, but still holding mostly to the shape she’d tamed it into that morning. She held the band out in her palm so the shadow could see it better. “I made it myself.”

The shadow walked up to the tree’s barrier. Its hand reached out and immediately began to break up and fizzle out. It looked like it had earlier, or like the invisible curtain did. She could see something there, but only because it moved. “This is not simply human knitting,” the shadow said as it drew back towards the tree and the arm resolidified.

“I’ve spent a lot of my life in theaters,” Denice acknowledged as she looked down to fiddle with the item. “A few of them have been occupied. I learned handicrafts there while helping in costuming.”

“I will take this as payment for telling you where the two you seek are located.”

Denice’s attention jumped back up to the shadow in surprise, her eyes wide. “Please,” she asked, offering the item out once more.

The shadow beckoned. “Come into the circle. Bring it to me. I cannot step outside.”

Denice stared down at the line of rocks. She had always been told not to intrude past this lest she risk raising the ire of the fae who lived in the tree, but nothing had ever been said as to when those same beings invited you in. She knew the stories of those who stepped into fairy circles and could never come back out. She knew the stories of those who returned to the human world only to turn to dust because they had outspent their life in Faerie.

Denice knew all of this, and yet, when push came to shove and she thought of losing her chance at finding Whiskey and Tango, Denice set her jaw, took a steadying breath and stepped forward.


	13. Chapter 13

Up until the point Connor fell over, gasping for air, he had been the one faring better between the two of them. The walls of the room they were in were steel. Steel being an alloy helped cut through the worst of the iron’s sting, but there was too much of it to not feel it’s overbearing heft. Tony could taste the metal on the air and he choked on it.

Connor had been the one supporting him. He’d wrapped his arms around Tony and burned his fingers trying to take off the iron bracelet on Tony’s wrist one moment. He was on the floor, gasping and writhing the next.

Tony ran up to the door and pounded against it. “Let us out!” he demanded. “He’s suffocating!”

No one responded. There were no footsteps.

Behind him, Connor took ragged breaths and forced himself to stand and hobble over to Tony.

“It’s Ford,” he said. “Ford’s in danger.”

_ “What?” _

Short of Connor’s heavy breaths, broken intermittently with metallic coughs, the room was silent. Tony stopped tasting metal on the air until he realized it was because he wasn’t breathing at all.

He forced himself to breathe in the iron-soaked air again. Connor stumbled and Tony helped him back down to a seated position.

“I put a charm on her,” Connor finally explained when he stopped coughing.

“Why?”

“Because she got rid of a lot of her protections when we told her what we were,” Connor said with a glare. “Didn’t you realize how much easier it was to be around her?”

Tony’s face twisted in the same way it always did when something didn’t make sense to him. “I just thought it was because she knew our secret,” he argued.

“She had little things,” Connor said as he shook his head. “Nothing that would really ward anyone of any consequence off, but enough they might direct their attentions elsewhere. I was worried she might draw the wrong sort of attention when we weren’t there with her.”

“You wanted to protect her?” Tony asked.

Connor bit at his cheek then nodded.

Tony fell onto his ass, his energy from earlier draining too fast to sit carefully. “And the charm was triggered?” he pressed.

Once again, Connor nodded.

“We don’t have time to be here,” Tony said. “We need to find her!” he shouted for their captors to hear.

“Shut up!” a man yelled back and banged on the door.

“Please! She’s human!” Connor pressed.

“We’ll protect our own! You’re the threat!” the man yelled back and walked off.

Tony slumped even as Connor began to pull at the fastener of the iron bracelet around his wrist. “We need to get to her,” he said.

Tony could already smell the scent of singed flesh. “Connor, we can’t get them off,” he reminded. They had tried that already. Connor had already burnt his fingers badly trying to remove Tony’s. They had eventually given up and helped each other pull their jacket sleeves through to provide a barrier between the bracelets and their aching, burning wrists.

Connor ignored the reminder, however, and continued to tug. “But if I can, then I might be able to get us out,” he argued. “We can find her and save her.”

“Stop.” Tony pulled at Connor’s hand, even as Connor tried to bat him away. “You’re just hurting yourself.”

“I have to!” Connor shouted, frantic. He glared at Tony as if Tony was the one holding him here.

“No!” Tony shouted back, leaning in to place his body between Whiskey’s two hands. Their faces hovered near each other as they breathed through their exertion. “I know you want to,” Tony said, feeling like he’d been bag-skated. “I want to, too,” he promised, “but you’re going to wear yourself out. I can’t watch you do that.”

Tony turned his attention to the burned fingers and wrapped both of his hands around the injured appendages. He closed his eyes and dug deep, through his exhaustion, to find the quickly dwindling reserves of his own magic and connection to nature and life itself.

“Tony, don’t,” Connor warned as Tony felt his reserves drain even faster. Connor tried to pull his hand away, but couldn’t break from Tony’s grasp. The angry scent of burning flesh began to disappear.

“Don’t waste your magic—” Connor tried again, but Tony opened his eyes to glare at him.

“It’s not a waste when it’s for you,” he said. “If I can’t help Ford right now, at least I can help you.”

He didn’t stop until Connor’s fingers were back to normal. By then, his shoulders were already starting to droop in exhaustion and the chill of an all-metal room and lack of energy began to rear its head.

“Come here,” Connor beckoned as Tony began to shiver hard. He directed Tony to lean against his chest and wrapped his arms around him. Warmth began to seep through him and the shivering slowed to something manageable.

“N-now who’s w-wasting their ma-gic?” Tony asked, stumbling over a tense jaw and numbing lips.

Connor leaned in against his ear and said, “It’s not a waste when it’s for you.”

Tony jolted and reached up to rub at his ear, pulling away to glare at Connor, even if he had a feeling it came across more as a pout when he scolded, “Y-y-you c-can’t just steal s-someone’s line like that.”

Connor smirked. “I just did.”

His eyes were soft, but even so Tony felt the tension as Connor’s fingers kept tensing into fists he had to force himself to relax.

Tony relaxed back into Connor’s hold. The more contact he had, the easier it was to breathe. It made Tony wish there was a way to crawl inside him.

“Is sh-she still in d-d-danger?” he asked, instead, resting his hands over Connor’s trembling fingers. They clenched beneath his touch then relaxed enough for Tony to thread his own fingers through. He gripped tight onto Connor’s hands as he felt himself drifting further away.

“I don’t know,” Connor admitted, his voice small. “It was a small charm, enough to protect her right away and let me know to find her.”

He didn’t have to say the rest. That he never expected to not be able to be there should it be needed. That he never expected to be locked in a room built specifically to hold him prisoner as it killed him.

“Connor,” Tony whispered. “I’m cold.”

“Just hold on, okay?” Connor tightened his hold, pulling Tony between his legs. It didn’t do much to chase away the ache beginning to seep into his bones, but it was a comfort Tony leaned in to all the same.

“Do you think this is what happened to Ceilidh?” he asked.

“I don’t really want to think about that,” Connor said, pressing his face into Tony’s shoulder.

There was some noise out the door, but it sounded pretty far away. Tony hoped whoever it was that had grabbed them hadn’t found anyone else to trap down here.

Tony exhaled and watched his breath condense. The steam was growing fainter each time, his body temperature dropping further and further. As a child, his mother had told him his love of winter would be his undoing. He had always thought she was being stubborn, unwilling to adapt. Tony shivered and curled into a tighter ball. If he didn’t escape soon, if he didn’t warm up soon, Tony knew he’d disappear.

“Hey, Connor?” he asked, beginning to feel sluggishness take hold. His eyelids were beginning to feel heavy.

“Yeah?” Connor mumbled into his shoulder.

“I really do love winter,” he said. “And I’m glad I came here—”

“Tony—”

“I’m glad I met you.”

Whiskey slammed a hand over his mouth. “No one’s saying any goodbyes.”

Tony licked the hand in a long, slow stripe and Connor pulled it away in disgust to rub it against the leg of his jeans.

“You can’t stop me,” Tony said in exhausted triumph. His eyes had officially fallen shut. It would be so easy to simply drift off.

The door slammed open.

“Ford,” Connor said in disbelief.

Tony frowned as Connor jostled him. “Is she in trouble again?” he mumbled.

“No. She’s here.” Connor’s voice was filled with awe but Tony couldn’t help but think that was the worst news he’d heard yet. The steel might not kill her, but that didn’t mean this was a place anyone should be.

“Did they get her, too?” he asked, his heart breaking as someone grabbed his wrists and hauled him up. He whimpered as Connor disappeared from behind him.

“Nah,” Connor promised. Fingers played at his wrist until the iron bracelet fell away. It wasn’t enough to recover, but Tony found he could breathe easier. “She’s saving us.”

Two sets of hands pulled him up onto his feet and wrapped his arms around their shoulders.

“Are you okay to carry him?” Connor asked.

“I’ve lugged around stage props and backgrounds heavier than both of you combined,” Ford grumbled.

They began moving forward.

It was an odd mishmash of scenes from that point as Tony slowly found himself capable of opening his eyes intermittently.

There was a small corridor with doors flung open. There was a horde of shrieking pixies throwing minor hexes at a man cornered underneath a desk, holding a broken horseshoe up in an attempt at protection. There were stairs—too many stairs—and, finally, there was a breeze and, when Tony breathed in, he couldn’t taste any more iron.

The two sets of shoulders slipped out from under his arms and the four hands helped drop him down to the ground. Tony’s fingers slipped into dirt. He wanted to cry as he felt life rush back into him, so he did.

Each tear that fell to the freezing cold dirt caused green to spring forth. Grass and weeds already beginning to peek through the dirt spread and marigolds budded, bloomed and, finally, faded as his tears quieted to hiccoughs and sniffles.

He felt hands on his back and bodies on each side of him. When he sat back up he saw Ford and Connor looking at him in concern. Connor was also holding on to Ford’s arm. He only seemed to tighten his hold when he realized Tony had seen it.

Tony sent Connor a questioning glance to which he responded with the barest nod of his head. Tony beamed as he turned to Ford. “My queen.” 

Ford blinked at him in surprise before laughing. “Isn’t that supposed to be your mom?” she asked, wearing a smile that spread from ear to ear and shone in the moon’s light. He couldn’t even see her eyes with how large her smile was.

Tony smiled back, the last of his tears drying on his face.

“No.” He shook his head and reached out to grab onto Connor’s hand on her arm. His entire body sang at the contact and the sight of all three of them together. “I’ve only wanted to follow you for a long time,” he admitted, breathless, as he turned his face back to Ford’s once more.

Ford seemed to be staring down at where all three of them were touching, as well. “What about Whiskey?” she whispered. Tony could hear her heart pound.

“He’s following you, too, of course,” he said before Connor could even open his mouth. He smiled triumphantly at the nonplussed expression frozen on Connor’s face. “Both of us,” he confirmed with a pleased nod as he pushed his and Connor’s hands down Ford’s arm to her hand. He twined his fingers through both of theirs. “We’re a package deal.”

“I...I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Humans were an odd sort of creature; so quick to lie. Tony could hear her quick, shallow breaths and feel the way her hand and fingers twitched against his and Connor’s grasp. She knew what he was saying. She just didn’t believe it.

Humans were too quick to lie over even the smallest things. It left them wary that anything else they might hear was also a lie.

Tony leaned in, tightening his hold on the hands below his even as Connor tried to pull away.

“I’m saying I love you,” he said as easily as one might comment on the weather. “Connor does, too.”

Ford’s wide eyes bounced back and forth between the two of them like a game of pinball. “Really?” she asked, her disbelief finally settling on Connor.

Connor looked away, refusing to make eye contact with her. “You should know we can’t lie,” he grumbled. Because, while some of humankind’s understanding about their kind was absolute bullshit, there was quite a bit that they had spot on.

Tony looked from Connor’s embarrassment to Ford’s continued disbelief and smirked. “Connor was so worried about you he put a protection charm on you.”

Connor flushed. “Wh—!”

“Is that what the explosion was?”

Connor and Whiskey blinked at each other then turned to Ford. “Ex...plosion?”

“I mean, it wasn’t big,” Ford said, shifting in embarrassment, “but...when it happened I realized it was probably for a reason and I ran. I...was looking for someone to help me find you guys. The Haus Brownie and Jenny and Mandy sent me to the well and a Will o’ the Wisp took me from the well to a fairy tree in the preserve…”

“I knew the vacated wishing well was going to cause a problem,” Connor muttered.

“You’re amazing,” Tony said, on the other hand. “You did so much.”

Ford’s skin hid any blush the nearby lightposts were willing to show on Connor, but Tony could still know it was there by the face she made and how she tried to hide it by looking away from him. “Well, the person I met there is the one who caused the explosion,” she continued, ignoring Tony’s words entirely. “I ended up asking the theater pixies for help. They did so much to help me, I—”

“Ford.”

Ford blinked and looked back to Tony. “Yeah?”

Tony looked her in the eye and said clearly, “Connor put a protection charm on you. I think he might’ve chopped his own hand off Saw-style if it meant he could’ve gotten out of there to get to you any faster.”

“You don’t have to say it like that,” Conner mumbled darkly. Tony didn’t even need to look to know he was glaring to keep the blushing at bay. He couldn’t really regret not looking, however, as he watched Ford fidget more and more as she looked between the two of them like a deer in headlights until she buried her face in her hands.

“I told you guys to stop using glamours around me,” she scolded.

Tony frowned and turned to Connor in confusion. His flush was starting to fade, but Tony could still see enough red to know it was more than the cold air causing it. That was what helped Tony remember the night in Ford’s dorm when she called them both hot. He grinned in abject pleasure, even as Connor’s flush fully turned into a thoughtful frown.

“We don’t use your name,” he finally said, much to Ford’s apparent confusion.

“Huh?”

“We can’t use glamours on someone like you without using your name,” Connor explained. “A general glamour averts the human eye. It’s a distraction. But if a human pays enough attention or knows what to look for, they can see right through it. Like a card trick. Using someone’s name is what gives us power over people. It's how we can do real magic with them.”

Connor looked away again, his fingers fidgeting in the hold Tony still had over both their hands. Tony held his breath because he knew it meant Connor was going to say something he found too open or embarrassing to say.

“But we don’t use yours…” Connor pressed. “We want you to stay with us because you want to.”

Tony did a mental fist punch at the sound of Ford’s breath catching before physically raising his unoccupied hand. “By the way, I’d tell you my name, but you can’t pronounce it.”

“You haven’t even told me your name,” Connor argued.

Tony stuck his tongue out at Connor. “You can pronounce it.”

“Asshole,” Connor grumbled, but Tony could hear the laughter sitting at the tip of his tongue. He brought his hand back down, sticking it back in the dirt, digging his fingers in as deep as the packed, cold earth would allow. He never wanted to leave this spot again. Definitely not without Ford and Connor.

“What are your names like?” Denice asked.

“The best!” Tony crowed with pride. “Mine’s the sound a stream makes when early summer light dances on its surface through the leaves.”

“Mine’s the sound an icicle makes as it grows on a clear mid-winter day,” Connor told his lap.

“That sounds like it’d be really playful!” Tony said, oohing over the description as he tried to remember if he’d ever heard something like that before.

“Neither of those are sounds?” Ford pointed out.

“Not to humans,” Tony snorted.

“That doesn’t feel fair,” Ford argued.

Before Tony could figure out, however, if she meant it wasn’t fair that humans didn’t get to hear all the sounds (it wasn’t; Tony agreed) or if it wasn’t fair that she couldn’t know and pronounce their names, Connor responded. “You don’t need our names to hold power over us.”

Tony took a moment to process what exactly Connor had said, but, once he did, his jaw dropped. “That was smooth!” he shouted in excitement. “Connor, that was so smooth! I didn’t know you had it in you—”

“You’re both dorks.”

Connor and Tony looked back at Ford, pausing their bickering. Her words sounded pitying, but their hand under hers trembled and she hid her face in her free hand.

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked.

“Date us,” Tony answered as if it was the easiest reply he’d given in his life.

“Obviously,” Connor added with a facetious roll of his eyes.

Ford snorted and her hand dropped enough for them to see her eyes again, up until they shut with her laughter. “I told you to stop using your glamours on me,” she said with laughter in her eyes. When she let her hand drop all the way, it was to display a wry smirk that sent a shiver of excitement down Tony’s spine. She shook her head and asked, “How am I supposed to say no?”

“We still aren’t using your name,” Connor pointed out.

Ford bit her bottom lip as she leaned in to whisper, “You don’t need my name to hold power over me.”

Tony let out a muffled shriek of frustration. “You can’t just steal someone else’s line!” he argued in disbelief at having to say as much twice in one day. Where was the originality? If  _ wheeling someone _ , as Ransom and Holster and Nursey liked to call it, were as simple as repeating something they’d just said then there was no reason for anyone to be single ever. “It doesn’t work like that!”

Connor and Ford both started laughing, leaning in towards each other in their shared glee until their foreheads nearly brushed against each other. Their laughter died out when they caught each others’ attention. Tony could almost hear the silent conversation they shared through shining eyes and scheming grins.

“Tony,” Connor said as he leaned back and smirked at him. He jerked his head towards Ford, who was back to attempting to smother her laughter. “Just shut up and kiss her.”


	14. Chapter 14

Connor loved the ice. He loved the sound of his skates against the ice, the huff of each labored breath, the percussion of the puck hitting sticks, boards, glass. It was a song he would never get enough of, even with as muted as it was in the human world.

Then again, Connor had lived most of his life here, among the humans, pretending to be one of them. He was used to straining his ears to hear. He was used to burying himself in headphones and humankind’s attempts to mimic that which his own kind had introduced them to. But it could only do so much to fill the emptiness. There was a reason humans fell so quickly to true Music, after all.

Being on the ice, a part of one of the many songs of winter—of frozen water, exertion, agony and victory—left him feeling almost like the few times he had visited Winter, itself.

The siren sounded and bodies slammed into him from all around. Connor closed his eyes and smiled at their cheers. He let out a whoop of his own. He had been right in hearing victory tonight.

Two hours later, Tango shoved a red plastic cup of tub juice in his hands and then clacked his own against it, sloshing the liquid over the edge and onto their hands. Connor could feel it drying tacky. When he looked back up from frowning at it, Tango was innocently licking his own hand clean. Connor figured that meant Tango had already had two cups before this, which meant if he didn’t cut him off now, there would start to be strange phenomena he’d have to find a way to explain. He didn’t think he could blame it on Nursey’s affinity to foliage a second time if creepers started winding their way along the string lights again.

Someone came up beside them and threw an arm around each of their shoulders. “Hey, you guys coming along?”

Tony and Connor grinned at Ceilidh, who was back to looking as if he’d never faced a rough second in his life. Despite that, Connor didn’t think any of them, or the few others who had been released when Ford and the theatre pixies had stormed the basement they’d been locked away in, would be walking around without looking behind them for a long time. It was a surprise, actually, that not a one turned on humans besides chasing the ones who had held them captive out of Samwell with every curse they knew. It made Connor wonder if fear of what he and Tony did to the elf that had attempted to abscond with Denice was part of it. Denice seemed certain it was just that everyone was that understanding and good to begin with. Tony said it was because of Denice herself. At the very least, the entire school’s non-human population knew about her now and Denice found herself with a sudden boost of popularity.

“Ford!” Tony shouted over the music and the constant hum of the kegster crowd, waving his arms until she slipped through the crowd to join them. “We’re going!”

Denice looked at Ceilidh and the group of students hovering around him and waved. “I told you I’m not going with you.”

Tony immediately deflated at the reminder. “You had so much fun last time!” he argued but Ford simply shook her head.

“I don’t remember a thing,” she said, “and couldn’t walk for the next day.”

Connor smirked to himself as he remembered the way she’d run Tony around to make up for it.

“I really did think you’d be able to withstand it.”

Ford rolled her eyes. “I’m still a human,” she pointed out, “even if I do have an affinity with your kind. And I don’t like not remembering what I did. You guys have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Before she could retreat into the crowd, however, Connor reached out to grab her arm. “I’m not going.”

Denice turned back at him in surprise, though it couldn’t match the sheer disbelief Tony made at him.

“Whiskey?” he asked, because around others they were still sometimes Whiskey and Tango and Ford. Bitty especially had a tendency to insert himself into business only tangentially related to himself or his position as captain. It made it easier, at least for now, to be friends or linemates and manager to everyone else on the team.

“I have a better plan,” Connor explained. “Tony, you come, too.”

Tony frowned and looked back over at Ceilidh who stood, watching and listening and waiting for an answer.

“It’ll be worth it,” Connor swore. “Promise.” He grinned at Ford. “It’s something all three of us can do.”

It didn’t take another word before Connor could see the gears starting to turn in Tony’s head.

“If this has anything to do with the fact that I mentioned my roommate’s out of town this weekend…” Denice warned and Connor laughed through his embarrassment but shook his head in the negative.

“Sorry, Ceilidh,” Tony said with a shrug and a wave. “Have fun.”

Ceilidh looked the three of them over and winked. “You know me.” He shrugged. “You know where to find us if you change your mind.”

It took little effort on his part to quell the murmurs of disappointment in the rest of the group and herd them out the door.

“Don’t forget the pocket warmers!” Tony shouted after him and Denice laughed.

“So, what’s the plan?” she asked, turning to Connor.

Connor grinned. “It’s the equinox,” he said, feeling more playful than usual with the liminal balance of light and dark. “Let’s play with just the three of us.”

“I’m not participating in a three-person revel, either,” Denice argued.

“No revel. No circles or trees. The equinox allows for the human realm to overlap more strongly with other realms, including ours. I wanted to show you more of Faerie. You might not hear an icicle grow, but you might be able to hear a bit more of what we do on a regular basis.”

The more he tried to explain what he was trying to do, the more fond Denice’s smile became. It made Connor want to stop talking altogether. It was something he was still getting used to. Tony was all words and action, but in a distracting way. It was easy to fall into his pace and let him have his way, or be stuck trying to shepherd him in the direction he was needed. Denice wasn’t like that. She was attentive and expressive, but in a much quieter way. It forced introspection and Connor had always preferred leaving the things in his mind and heart to lie until absolutely necessary.

“I’d love to learn more about how you and Tony see the world,” she said and Connor only just managed to nod like a normal person and not, hopefully, a deranged bobblehead.

“Sounds fun. Let’s go,” Tony agreed and began to lead them out of the Haus.

“Y’all make sure to stay away from those lax parties!” Bitty shouted after them as they left.

“Bye, Bitty!” they shouted in unison as they and their laughter spilled into the cool spring night.

They didn’t even make it half-way down the block before Tony held out his hands to stop them and crouched down. “Since we hurt your feet last time, we’ll take extra care this time,” he teased as he reached back for balance and purchase. “Piggy back, come on!”

“If we’re not mindlessly dancing all night, then I’ll be just fine,” Denice argued.

Connor gave her a push towards Tony in spite of that. “You know you want to,” he grinned. “Enjoy it, your highness.”

Denice stuck her tongue out at him before walking up behind Tony. “He’s the one that’s actually royalty,” she retorted as she wrapped her arms around Tony’s shoulders. “Don’t stand up too—”

Tony jumped up to his feet and Denice shrieked, closing her eyes and wrapping her arms and legs as tight around him as she could despite his strong hold on her legs.

“You are so lucky I’m wearing jeans,” she grumbled once Tony had set a steady walking pace and she had relaxed into the hold.

“You don’t wear skirts or dresses to kegsters, though,” Tony replied easily.

“You notice the weirdest things,” Denice pointed out. She rested her chin on his shoulder. If I’m heavy, let me know, okay? You can put me down any time.”

Tony laughed and gave her a quick toss that had her squeaking and grasping onto him tightly again. “I could carry you forever,” he said.

“Why don’t you?” Connor suggested as he jumped ahead of the two and turned around, walking backwards at pace with them.

Denice didn’t seem considerably entertained by that thought. “Please don’t.”

Tony, on the other hand, thought seriously about the proposition before finally frowning in disappointment and realizing, “But then it’s hard to kiss her.”

Connor smirked. “I can do that.”

He changed directions and walked back towards them, leaning in to give Denice a kiss. His smirk softened at the touch of her lips.

“No fair!” Tony shouted. “I don’t get to kiss anyone in this scenario!”

Connor pulled away from Denice and the two of them laughed.

“Guess I gotta fix that, huh?” he asked her.

“Someone’s gonna have to,” she agreed with a quirk of her lips.

So Connor kissed her once more and, when Tony pouted again, he leaned over to kiss him, too. Though it was more a teasing peck than a full-on kiss. It was nice the way Tony would always chase what he wanted, Connor included. He smiled when Tony leaned in for more, taking his upper lip between his own.

“Yum,” Tony said when he pulled back. “It tastes like both of you. I like that.”

Connor raised his eyebrow at Tony. “How you taste anything after all that tub juice you had is beyond me.”

Before Tony could retort, a car horn honked and all three looked behind them to be blinded by headlights and hear the shouts of people telling them to get out of the way.

“We probably shouldn’t stand in the street, kissing, like drunk idiots,” Connor suggested.

“Not idiots,” Tony corrected, “just college students.”

Denice snorted as Tony carried her over to the sidewalk then grinned at Connor. “You mean there’s a difference?”

Connor and Tony both laughed with her as they continued across the river and over to Lake Quad.

Denice gasped when they finally stepped off the path and over to the Pond’s dark shoreline, just like Connor knew she would.

A few Will o’ the Wisps danced across the water, their flames ranging from a propane blue to sea green. Pixies danced with sprites in the air and on tree branches and in the shallowest parts of the shoreline. They were too much a part of the city to see more than a few of the brightest stars, but the moon shone full from a cloudless sky, peeking through the leaves, reflecting off the pond and softening everything with a silver light.

From the corner of his eye, Connor watched Ford smack at Tony’s arm until he let her down. She took a few steps ahead of them to take the scene in in its entirety.

A small breeze picked up and she leaned into it.

“I hear music,” she murmured, mesmerised, just loud enough for Connor to hear.

“It’s great, right?” Tony asked in the same soft awe.

Denice looked back at them. “Is this…?” she asked, her words trailing off as she closed her eyes and smiled wholly.

Connor wasn’t sure what she had wanted to ask. Was it music from the revel? Was it from the sprites and creatures around them? Was it in her head? No. It was, however, what Connor and Tony heard all the time.

“It’s hard to hear in the human world. There’s so much else drowning it out if not outright killing it off,” Connor explained. Ford opened her eyes to listen to him, and Connor smiled at the sight of them before stepping up to her and looking out at the scene before them. “But the world has its own song. It changes where you are and when you are, but it’s continued, unceasingly, from when it began. Nights like this just make it easier for even humans to hear so long as they have even a bit of sight or an open heart.”

The young leaves in the tree above them shivered with the dancing pixies and the dewy grass rustled as Tony joined them and it only added yet another note to the song they stood in the dark listened to.

Denice was the one to move first, stepping out of her shoes and shoving her socks inside them. She stepped in front of Connor and Tony and faced them, grabbing a hand each. “Dance with me,” she said.

“You want to dance now?” Tony asked and Connor could hear his held breath.

“So long as I’m in control of my own body and of sound mind, I’m always happy to dance,” Denice replied and tugged at their arms.

Connor and Tony both kicked off their shoes, too, but before they danced, Tony pulled an envelope out of his jeans pocket and held it out to Denice. It was disappointing to feel her drop his hand, but knowing what was in the envelope and why Tony had brought it, he couldn’t feel any regret. Besides, he knew he would have her hand back in his soon enough.

“What is it?” Denice asked as she took the envelope.

“Open it,” Tony said in reply.

Denice did just that and frowned in confusion at the envelope’s contents before looking warily to all the other creatures dancing around them.

“It’s so you’ll remember,” Tony explained. “I thought it might help.”

Denice brought the envelope to her chest then turned back to the pixies dancing on the tree branches above them. “It won’t scare them off?” she asked.

“Just hide it in your pocket. You can keep it in the envelope, too,” Connor suggested. “So long as they don’t see it, they won’t consider a nail a threat.”

“It won’t mess with my sight?” Denice asked next. “Or hearing the music?”

Tony blinked and looked at Connor before looking back at Denice. “Is it doing anything now?” he asked in devastated concern.

Denice’s eyes widened and she quickly turned back to the Pond, her eyes tracking the movements of the night’s dancers before closing as she swayed to the same music. “No,” she finally replied with a soft smile. It still didn’t look as hazy or hypnotic as it had earlier, so Connor assumed it was doing its job. Denice folded the envelope and stuck it in her back pocket. “Thank you,” she said as she held her hands out again.

Connor took one. Tony took the other.

As one they ran to the shoreline, taking the space the pixies and sprites made for them and danced around and with each other, ignoring the cold of the splashing water and damp ground. Time and the rest of the world disappeared as they frollicked in the in-between of winter and sprint and one day and the next and water and air and shore.

Denice threw herself around Connor and into Tony’s arms.

“How are your feet?” he asked her as he picked her up and spun her around.

“You’ll carry me home, right?” she asked.

“Always,” Tony swore.

Denice hummed in thought for a moment, then grinned. “Then I’ve got hours of dancing left,” she promised as she leaned in for a kiss.

Connor watched for a moment, enjoying the sight of the two he cared for most expressing their affection for each other, then walked over to join them, circling his arms around them. “Hey,” he interrupted. “What about me?”

Denice and Tony looked at each other when they broke apart then simultaneously leaned in to kiss him on either side of his mouth.

“Tony can carry you home, too,” Denice promised with a teasing smirk when she pulled away.

“I can?” Tony asked. He released Denice and let her slide back to the ground, but quickly took one of her hands back up.

“Why not?” Denice pressed, with a faux innocence as she held up their linked hands and turned under them, grabbing Connor’s hand and pulling him along, as well.

“Yeah,” Tony puffed up his chest and agreed. “Why not? I’ll carry you both.”

Denice laughed and Connor snorted. “I’m going to make you do it, too,” he swore as he passed in front of Tony again.

“I’ll really do it!” he shouted back.

That was another note in the song, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta readers, Kylie and Anna! You saved my butt and this fic. Thank you to the lovely and amazing mods who put this together! I'll miss the PBJ Epifest, but the sheer degree of variety in characters and ships in this one is outstanding and I can't want to read what else came out of this. Thank you to my giftee for such a fun prompt. I adore fantasy and fairy tales but am always terrified to write anything with magic in it, so I hope I did your request justice! Thank you to all the other creators out there for making this epifest such a fun event! And, finally, thank you to anyone who reads this fic. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.


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